#everyone else gets to stat pad but him apparently

[ddaenggtan]

are you gonna do anything for kookie's birthday?? i know a lot of writers are and i was hoping you might be one of them :)

I don’t have anything, tbh, because I’ve been mostly working on my fic for the Love Yourself Collab (which you should def check out bc I know at least one or two have posted theirs and I’m so hype to read them!!) and the sequel to mechanic!joon from the poll a while back. 

I will give you this crumb though, for everyone who read Chasing Butterflies and thoroughly enjoyed it the way I did. 

“I just don’t get it,” Nayun says as she straps her pads on. Jisoo doesn’t react and Rose looks like she might actually kick your asses if you aren’t on the court in ten seconds. “What do you not get? Like what about this situation is confusing?” You ask. “I’m whipped for Jungkook, we been knew, and he’s apparently through some great act of mercy also whipped for me, and he’s bringing every single one of his nerd friends to the match today. Which isn’t at all nerve-wracking. Whatsoever.”

Jisoo rolls her eyes and tugs harder at your laces. She always does your laces, she’s the only one with the upper body strength to tie the things well. You think she might actually be moonlighting as a secret BDSM dominatrix just based on the way she handles them. 

“No, I don’t get why you’re nervous. He’s seen you play before, didn’t he tell you that he tries to come to as many home games as possible? And his friends know nothing about the sport, they won’t know if you fuck it up.”

“Which you won’t,” Rose says from the door. "Because you’re good at this.”

“And because you’ll kill me if I fuck it up.” She doesn’t respond verbally, but the look she sends you radiates ‘yeah and what about it’ energy. “Look, I’m just...scared of disappointing his friends. He talks me up all the time apparently, and if they get bored or are unimpressed then...”

“What, you think he’s gonna break up with you?” Jisoo’s tone is teasing, but when she looks up to see the insecuirty on your face, she softens. “You put on a cosplay for him, and he’s liked you for almost as long as you’ve liked him. I don’t think he’s going anywhere.”  

You just nod, tugging at the laces as she finishes tying them. Realistically, you know she’s right. It’s been a couple months since that night in your apartment, and things have only gotten better. He still comes to the coffee-shop to hang out with his dweeb friends, even if he does spend the time waiting for them talking to you now. He still watches his dumbass anime, thoroughly enjoying your flat-screen to do so, even if he gets consistently distracted by the way you lay in his lap. You talk about your practices that he knows a fair bit about because of some anime, he tells you about his nerd shit that you don’t understand but enjoy hearing about anyway, you help him with his essays and he helps you with Organic Chem, and you even buy him little cupcakes every time he gets a new comment on his fanfic. Things between you are good.

You have no reason to worry, you decide as you push out of the locker rooms and head to the court to get warmups started. You spot him, sitting with his group of friends beside where Jimin and Taehyung sit with the rest of the guys’ team to watch your game. Your boyfriend - your whole chest gets warms as you think it, and you let yourself bask in it for a minute because it took three fucking years to get - looks adorable today; big, round glasses, with that soft beanie and a softer looking shirt. It’s got some kind of weird pumpkin(?) on it, with a point and sharp teeth and the back has a scythe and you vaguely recognize it. You’re pretty sure he watched it at your apartment a few days ago, but you also had his dick in your mouth, so you weren’t paying much attention to anything else. 

You wave back when he waves at you, big and excited and cute, and you’re once again hit with the urge to cover him in kisses while also maybe dangling him off a fifty-story building. His nose scrunches in that way you love and you ignore the way it has your stomach flipping. 

Rose pelts a ball at you and you catch it on sheer instinct. 

“Are you actually going to warm up or are you gonna be entirely useless today?” She asks. You glare at her and throw the ball back in response. If you didn’t have firsthand experience with how good she is, you’d wish she was your opponent so you could wipe the smirk off her face. 

Warmups go well. The team you’re supposed to be playing is good, supposedly pretty well-matched to your own, and you’re excited to see if it holds true. They don’t look especially intimidating. The biggest threat seems to be their captain - which is true for your team as well, Rose is terrifying - and there are a couple girls milling around in jackets and over-shirts. One in particular catches your notice; as you look, you realize it’s because Jungkook has the same jacket. Black, with a big-ass Old-English-styled L on the back of it, and some kind of writing you can’t see on the front and can’t remember from Jungkook’s, small and in the corner where logos usually go. 

You make a note to ask which anime that’s from, just to know in the future, and return to your warmups. 

The game itself is...well, it’s challenging. The other teams is as well-practiced as yours, they’re balanced against you pretty well, and all of you are enjoying the competition almost as much as you’re frustrated that you aren’t getting anywhere. Their captain - a shorter girl with pretty eyes and dimples - is an absolute beast and Rose looks simultaneously enraged and turned on, and Weeb Girl has been blocking you at every turn. She volleys every serve you give, manages to block every spike without fail, and you can respect that she’s good at this, but you’re also really fucking frustrated. 

It’s the end of the second set and both teams are ready for the ten minute break. You’re in the process of trying to drown yourself in your Gatorade bottle and really considering using the stuff to summon some kind of demon just so you can win the game, go home, stuff yourself with cheap burgers, and then fuck your boyfriend because you could tell from his face at one point that he was getting worked up watching you play, but before you can you catch sight of your friends whispering quietly to themselves. 

It screams ‘hey we’re doing something really shady and don’t want you to know, maybe you should immediately storm over and find out what’s going on’ so you do exactly that. 

“What the fuck do you mean ‘should we tell her?’“ You demand, keeping your voice as hushed as theirs. Nayun looks repentant and sorry, Jisoo actually literally makes the emoji face with the teeth, and Rose just purses her lips and gestures over her shoulder. 

You really don’t know what you expect to see, but Jungkook hanging over the side of the bleachers to talk to Weeb Girl isn’t it. His eyes are crinkled at the corners like they do when he’s excited, his glasses are half-down his nose and in danger of falling off because you aren’t there to push them back up like he enjoys, and he’s gesturing happily to Weeb Girl. And she....she looks just as excited, twirling a piece of hair between her fingers and batting her lashes up at him as she says something else that makes him laugh. You can’t realistically hear it, it’s too crowded and noisy, but you feel it when he laughs, every time. 

“We should call the police, she’s gonna kill her,” Jisoo says morbidly from behind you. 

“No,” You respond, scoffing. Your eyes don’t draw away from where your boyfriend is talking to Weeb Girl. “No, I’m not. She can flirt all she wants, it’s fine. Yeah, she’s blocked me at every turn this game, yeah she’s kinda really pretty, and she definitely has the ass for those shorts, and she’s wearing weeb stuff that she’s probably interested in and can talk to him about, but it’s fine. I know Jungkook, he’s not gonna do anything. He’s a good guy.” And you mean it when you say it. If there’s one thing that you’re sure of in your relationship that isn’t Jungkook knowing random weeb stats, it’s that he’s loyal. You know it, deep in your bones. 

You watch as Weeb Girl steps forward, cutting off whatever Jungkook’s saying to push his glasses up his nose, giggling as she does. Your fingers twitch because yes, that is your job, not hers, but it’s fine. It’s absolutely fine. Until her captain calls her back and she giggles again and waves, and Jungkook turns to sit and you see it. He’s got that pretty blush on his face, the one that tints his cheeks and makes him duck his head, the one you love so much but especially when you’re riding him and can get him to break out of the dominant persona he loves and turn pink with your words. 

And you know that your boyfriend is loyal and sweet and wonderful, can tell by the way he searches for you and melts into a smile like the ice cream you’re pretty sure you forgot to put back in your freezer before you had to rush out to get to this game. But pushing his glasses up is your job and that is your blush and you aren’t about to let some weeb queen take it from you. 

Rose looks pleased as you all take the court again. Jisoo looks convinced you’re gonna kill Weeb Girl, and you won’t lie; you’re definitely trying to see if you can will someone to set fire with only the power of your brain as you stare her down across the net. She looks entirely too pleased with herself and even dares to send a quick glance and a shy smile off at where you know Jungkook sits behind you, and you wish - not for the first time in your life - that you had Harry Potter powers and could just Crucio this fucker right now. 

Alas, you’re gonna have to settle for slamming a volleyball into her face. 

Nayun looks horrified at the sight, but you can tell Rose is holding back a smile even as the ref gives you a penalty that you willingly take. Weeb Girl looks pissed and also a little confused. Logically it’s not her fault that she chose to flirt with your weeb; and you can’t even fault her for it, because he’s gorgeous and sweet and perfect, but god damn what a day to do it. 

Throughout the rest of the third set, you’re basically unstoppable. You score three times on her, and you take a sick pleasure in the bruise that’s already forming under her eye. Her entire team looks confused, and you are too, because none of you are sure of where this sudden burst of skill and fury is coming from, but you’re determined to ride it out for as long as it lasts. 

When the game’s over, your entire team crowds you to celebrate. You’re a good player, you don’t have any allusions to that, but you’re also pretty much just reliably good. You’ve never played like that, not in your entire life, and you’re thriving with the knowledge that you even can. 

When they finally back up, you bolt before they can throw Gatorade on you, already climbing the stands. Jimin laughs as you shove him to the side, and you decide to feel guilty about the way he almost falls later, because right now you’re on a mission. You straddle the stand and fist one hand in Jungkook’s shirt, pulling him into a heated kiss that he doesn’t hesitate to return. In seconds you’re almost on his lap, one of his hands gripping your jaw so he lick into your mouth the way he likes while your free hand tangles in his hair. When you eventually pull back, he settles soft kisses along your jaw and you take great pride in looking straight at Weeb Girl. She doesn’t look mad, exactly; more resigned and slightly impressed, and you send her a wink that makes her roll her eyes. 

“Hey,” You whisper to Jungkook. He detaches himself from the mark he was determined to make behind your ear, and you revel in the blush on his face. It spreads across his face and along to the tips of his ears, and you want nothing more to than to make is spread further. “You wanna go put on some Haikyuu and break in your new mattress?” 

You don’t think you’ve ever left a game that fast in your life. 

[cyniciism]

´   ･   .   ✶   ⧼    manny   montana,   cis   male,   he   &   him   /   bury   me   face   down   by   grandson   +   a   grubby,   faded   duffel   bag   always   packed   to   capacity   ;   ready   to   be   picked   up   and   slung   over   a   shoulder   padded   in   worn   leather   at   a   moments   notice.   the   slow   build   of   white   hot   anger,   the   itch   in   clenched   fists   with   already   bloodied   knuckles   to   lash   out,   to   do   more   damage,   to   destroy   whatever   is   within   reach.   broken   windows   and   filthy   rooms   and   a   sinking couch   that   has   been   slept   on   one   too   many   times,   bed   clothes   still   knotted   on   its   frame   and   vodka   bottles   half   empty   on   the   mismatched   side   table    ⧽   ━━   don’t   look   now,   but   that’s   CRISTIAN   RAMIRO   DE   LA   CRUZ.   the   THIRTY   year   old   HUMAN   has   been   here   in   seattle   for   his   whole   life,   and   is   a   DETECTIVE   &   LOCAL   YOUTH   GROUP   LEADER.   they’ve   always   been   STAUNCH   &   VALOROUS,   but   i   guess   this   town   just   brings   out   the   worst   in people   ;   apparently,   they’ve   been   way   more   BELLICOSE   &   INJUDICIOUS   than   usual.   it   wouldn’t   surprise   me   if   they   knew   what   was   going   on.   you   can   check   out   his   stat   page   HERE   and   his   pinterest   HERE.

ALL   ALONE   /   whether   you   LIKE   IT   or   not,                alone   will   be   (   something   )   you’ll   be   quite   A   LOT.

SECTION ONE OF THREE : BULLET POINT HISTORY trigger warnings for talk of chronic ill health, prison, sociopathy, serial killers

anyone who knows cristian’s birth mother, mariana de la cruz, can agree on at least one thing - whether she SHOULD have or not, she ALWAYS say the best in people. it probably had something to do with how little about people she actually KNEW. ana was born, it seemed, to suffer ; she spent her whole life SICK, all of her time either in hospital, or AT HOME. she was BEYOND sheltered, and she had very few friends because of it. her kindness could only get her so far in life when she was so SEPARATED from it.

she started to write to CONVICTS in her late teens. it was a decision made out of loneliness, and she figured that was a feeling that the people she wrote to could RELATE to. as heinous as some of their crimes were, ana continued to feel EMPATHY for them. if she had just a few more critical thinking skills, maybe she wouldn’t have fallen in LOVE. he was a sociopath, and a homicidal sadist. he was a SERIAL killer. he was SERVING consecutive life sentences. and still, she got on his visitation list. STILL, five years after they initially began to exchange letters, she obtained a marriage license. and two years after that, cristian ramiro de la cruz, mariana and her locked up love’s child, came into the world.

back when he was just a BABY, of course he visited the prison with his mother ; they would make the trek together once every six months, as this was about as much as she could MANAGE. his mother thought that he was their MIRACLE, and at that, believed wholeheartedly that his father LOVED them BOTH. when he got old enough for conscious thought, he’d REFUSE, point blank. his mother was blind to the type of man that his father was, but cristian’s defining memory is from when he was SIX YEARS OLD, and he was gazing back at his father through the bars of their visitation room. there was no love, in those eyes - eyes they SHARED, and that he would HATE, later on. there was nothing in his expression, that even IMPLIED a hint of care. mariana was delusional, but cristian could SEE what she couldn’t. he would kick up a fuss ever after as his mother prepared to leave, and though it broke her heart - and her visions of a HAPPY FAMILY - she would leave him with a RELATIVE.

outside of this delusion she had, however, mariana was the best mother that he could have ever WANTED. she was the sweetest and most gentle soul ; she loved him with a real FEROCITY, this baby she had never thought she would have, and she was WICKEDLY over protective of him. mariana didn’t LOVE that cristian had to grow up quickly, because of her health. it didn’t make her happy to have a son that could cook for them both when she was simply too weak, or that knew her exact medication dosages off the top of his head, or who had been taught how to place her into the recovery position should the WORST ever happen. he should have gotten to be a KID, and he didn’t, because of her. it HURT, more than anything, and it was probably why the fact he wanted nothing to do with his FATHER pained her so ; they shared EVERYTHING, in their home. they experienced everything, together. and the one thing that cristian couldn’t do was love the man he knew was a MONSTER.

when he was ten years old, his mother collapsed the day before one such visitation. he found her at the bottom of the stairs, and he called 911 from her PHONE as he had been taught to. it wasn’t the first time that his mother had been to the hospital, over his childhood, but it was the first time that he didn’t leave with her. it was decided that mariana was no longer in position to take care of cristian, or herself. she was better off in assisted living, and he would do better in care.

it didn’t take LONG for him to be taken in, and his ‘new parents’... were good substitutes, for the one’s he didn’t have, though he told his adoptive mother more times than he could count that she would never replace his REAL mother. neither of them wanted to, and they won his respect very early on for how they approached DEALING with him. they were there, when he needed someone, and theynever hesitated to help him, when it was required. but they brought him to visit his birth mother once a week, and when he was old enough, he was allowed to go and see mariana ALONE. they helped him buy presents for her, they didn’t STOP him from leaving school early, when his mother’s health seemed to have dipped. they didn’t control him or attempt to take a place they had no right to, and so, cristian grew out of his grudge. it was as easy as that.

and what was more, as he got older and started to go through puberty - they stuck by him, even when he ACTED OUT. cristian had a huge capacity for ANGER - and when he lost his head, he would… break things, over yelling. they never lost their heads with him. they always spoke CALMLY, even after he had punched a hole into his wall, or shattered his mirror. and when he asked, they didn’t HESITATE in sending him to counseling ; something HE recognized he needed, all on his own, as he reached his sixteenth birthday and realized that his BIGGEST fear was being his FATHER, and he was very quickly turning into him.

cristian decided to become a DETECTIVE because he didn’t want to be the kind of MONSTER that his father was. he wanted to be LAW ABIDING in every way - almost to prove to himself, to his father, to EVERYONE who had ever known him, that the blood that ran through his veins wasn’t EVIL. he signed on as team leader for a local group for troubled youth, recently, because he had been there. he had been angry. he had lashed out. he had made BAD CHOICES in his teens that he was lucky hadn’t come back to BITE him. but he’d gotten past it, for the most part, and he wanted to help OTHERS. that’s all he’s been trying to do.

SECTION TWO OF THREE : HEADCANONS trigger warning for mention of cancer

mariana is still alive today, and cris visits her once a fortnight. he still brings her a bouquet of flowers every time, though the gifts he gives are ever changing ; she goes through periods, and right now, she’s enjoying an embroidery hobby, so he brings her thread.

his FATHER, charles brandt, is ALSO still alive - though he TREATS him like he’s NOT. he was diagnosed a year ago with stomach cancer, and cristian’s mother has urged him almost every time he’s visited to do what she can’t, and VISIT. he’ll never want to upset her enough that he’ll tell her the only time he will is when he’s DEAD, but he certainly thinks it quite a bit.

the ONLY reason cristian hasn’t taken on his adoptive parents surname, by now, is equal parts feeling it insulting and because there’s a part of him that thinks doing so would be HIDING. he’s cristian de la cruz, and yes, he’s the son of a serial killer. it’s certainly SOMETHING, and perhaps he would have had an easier time in life at certain points if he wasn’t who he had been BORN. but he’s pretty stubborn, so, here we are.

morals wise, cristian is a GOOD GUY. in every other sense of the words, he probably… wouldn’t be classed as so. he’s pretty arrogant, and he has a fairly bad reputation in the police department because of his TENDENCY to kind of run with things, and charge ahead. they like to say he doesn’t THINK, and that’s why he makes ‘poor’ decisions - but cris is actually very conscious of everything that he does, and he’s very willing to… make the tough call, so to speak, so that no one else HAS to.

he’s still very hot headed. he still goes to counseling. he still fucks up, from time to time. it’s all very human.

SECTION THREE OF THREE : WANTED CONNECTIONS

you know the usual DRILL ! friends ( anything from best to passing ), enemies, hookups, exes, the very MOST. hit me up if you’re interested !

i’m going to send in wcs later but: 

his adoptive fam !

two half siblings via his serial killer dad !

cristian’s partner in the seattle police force

his oldest friend + current housemate

his enemy w benefits !

work friends , enemies , everything in btwn

his ex fiancé ( its super angsty )

the cotm who will eventually turn him

members of his group for troubled youth ! 

[writtenbyhappynerds]

FF102: Unit 9, The End’s the Best Part

Hello. This is the last chapter of Fanfiction 102. Our final page, and our last piece. We wanted to end on a fitting note. As such, our final unit is on something the Editor and I find very important: endings.

          In the writing process, and in my writing process, endings are written as soon as possible. It’s okay if you start a story and don’t know how it ends, but you need to quickly figure out what the ending of the story is because it becomes an invaluable tool for you as a writer. With an ending, you have a goal to work towards and a final destination for your characters to reach. They have a purpose, and a point and any conflicts along the way or trials and tribulations can contribute or lead to this ending. As soon as you know what the ending is, it is much easier to refine and polish your work. Again, the ending doesn’t have to be written right away. It doesn’t have to be an executed and created piece that will be incorporated later. For our current in-progress fanfics, What Do We Owe and Ashes to Ashes, the Editor and I know exactly how Ashes to Ashes is going to end. We didn’t know until around chapter 8, but we now know how Cicely Godith’s story will come to a close. For What Do We Owe, the ending is still more abstract. We have ideas, and we’ve focused down our ideas on what means the most to our characters, but it isn’t a fully fleshed-out concept that can be copied and pasted onto the last chapter. It’s a footnote. A goal in the back of our minds to work towards.

          In many fanfictions, we see the first half of a piece be well-thought-out. You can see the care and time an author put into one story and one plot point. However, you can also see the difference between a well-thought-out first half, and a poorly executed second half. It always looks like the author had a clear vision of the first half of the story, but once they got there they didn’t know where to go. As such, the fanfic putters out in the second half and falls to the wayside. Even if you have to follow the traditional 3-arc storyboard, do it. Everyone hates on outlines when they’re literally the most helpful thing in the world. Even if you change the inside or fix the details, having an outline lets you keep your whole life together. Attached to this chapter is one of my own 3-act outlines. It is for a story that has not been written, and an idea that I had that I didn’t want to forget. Because of this outline, I have more to reference than a few half-baked scenes. I can leave this story alone for the next 2 weeks or the next 2 years, and still, come back and figure out exactly where I was and where I wanted to go.

There are many modern examples of writers who thought about their endings first, and writers who didn’t. The difference is dramatic, and when you write the ending themes and motifs can easily reveal themselves. For example, you can’t foreshadow if you don’t know where you’re going. If your ending is done, you can start dropping hints in a way that makes sense and contributes to a plot and leads your readers down a rabbit hole to a grand conclusion. Game of Thrones is a great example of a TV show that did not write their ending first. As such, their grand twists and turns and revelations felt rushed and cheap because we never got to see the descent into madness that was meant to portray the turn of the tides. Had they written their ending earlier, they could have started that arc when Khal Drogo died and called his death the straw that broke the camel’s back. On the flipside, Percy Jackson and the Olympians had the final book ready by the end of the first. Rick Riordan was able to add all these twists and turns and tribulations in Percy’s story that led to Luke being the child of the prophecy. That led to Hestia being the last olympian. That led to Rachel Dare being the new oracle. By being sure of the final destination the road to get there was much more meaningful. It had a greater purpose.

          Now. This is not to say that your ending can’t change. The first ending you write for a story absolutely can change, and it doesn’t have to be the only ending you stick with. The goal of writing it down as quickly as possible is just to make the process of creating the story better for you as a writer. For some stories, the ending is easier than others. If you are writing a romance story the traditional ending is the OC marrying the love interest, settling down, and having 2.5 kids because that’s the goal for most romance stories- a quiet end with contentment and joy. However, if you’re writing romance as the subplot (as you should be) then you need a better ending than that. If you have a romance subplot but the actual main plot of the story is about a group of thieves, maybe the story ends in Las Vegas with a big bank heist. By writing down that heist first you know that your characters have to prepare themselves for that final fight and that ending story. If you look at games like Persona 5, the first thing you do in that game is to fight the final boss, then you’re captured by police and have to work as a character from the very beginning up to that fight. You know what is expected of you, and you can grind your stats accordingly.

          The last thing we can offer you as advice, and I suppose as commentary, is that we see a lot of authors add filler chapters of fluff because they’re insecure about the length of their work. They’re worried that if the fanfic is shorter and more plot-driven that it’s bad because many popular works have 300-some pages. The idea that something is bad if it’s shorter is absolutely not true. It is completely okay to cut fanfic short. God, I WISH someone had told me that when I was writing Psycho-Pass fanfic because it would have saved me so much time and so many conversations of “Maybe we add a fluff chapter here to pad the length.” If it doesn’t matter to you as the writer, it’s not going to matter to the reader. You the author are the first critic and the first reader. If you don’t care, no one else will. Emotional execution and driving the plot and creating moments in writing where you feel something is one of the ways where you know you can call yourself a good writer. If you can get people to feel exactly what you want them to at any given time, you can call yourself a good writer. But that takes work. Some emotions are handed to you. Some take time. I had the opportunity to sit down with an author and talk to him about this and he told me: I got humor for free. I could always make people laugh with my writing. But making people think, making people sad… those are things I had to work for. We as readers crave stories like that. We want stories that make us feel or think or question, but as a writer, there is a learning curve. Other people will tell you you’re a good writer long before you start to believe it, but once you can get that kind of control over your craft, you’ll believe it too.

          So now, this is our ending. If you want to be a writer, there are a few things you need. You need ego, and not jerky ‘I’m the best’ ego, you need to be able to be talked about in a negative way. You need to believe that you can write and get better at it because there are always moments of doubt, and believing in yourself actually matters because once Imposter-Syndrome, that feeling that someone will come along and say “we found out you can’t actually do this so it’s time to give it up.” Once that’s there it never goes away. You have to believe in yourself. You need to engage in self-criticism without collapsing entirely. You should be able to look at your stuff and be strong enough as a person to see that what you’ve created is not a reflection of who you are as a person. While you need an ego to write without fear, you need humility to know that no matter how much you write you can always learn more. Since the Editor and I started picking our works back up again, I’ve tried to do something different that I haven’t done in each piece. Whether it’s whimsical and romantic and sad or hard-hitting and collaborative. If you think that you’ve hit the limit on what you can master you limit your own ability for growth. So, you need an ego to write, humility to learn, and you need a mirror of imposter syndrome, which is that someone who doesn’t know anything about writing can still say something useful. Sometimes the Editor has no clue what I’m writing about. She doesn’t know the fandom or the genre, but she wants our works to be good, and even when she doesn't know what the fanfiction is about her advice is no less invaluable.

          We started the Fanfiction 101/102 courses because we saw an increase in errors and misfires in fanfiction writing. Instead of staying annoyed, we wanted to be the change we saw in the world and wanted to share with others what we have seen fail and triumph. What we have loved and what’s overdone. If you’ve made it through both 101 and 102 I hope you’ve taken away something worthwhile, and something that has improved your writing. Thank you for spending time with us.

          While this is our final chapter, we probably will have an epilogue with a second round of our favorite fanfics. That’ll be posted sometime next week because the Editor has 50,000 fanfics to sort through and apparently asking her to pick favorites is like asking her to pick a favorite child. For now, this is the end. If you ever want a critic or notes or anything of the sort, feel free to reach out. We’re always around.

Xoxo, Gossip Girl.

[andrewuttaro]

New Look Sabres: GM 28 - NJD - Birthday Wish

7-1 Win

The Buffalo Sabres are normally on the receiving end of tremendous beatings, at least for the last decade or so. Last night we got a rare taste of what it was like destroying a team by a lacrosse score line. It was something else. Less than seven minutes into the first period it was probably over. I was thinking about the future of several players careers… Devils players! The consensus on Sabres twitter seems to be this game came at just the right time. This club had the roughest of Novembers but had the points in the bank from October to make up the difference. They spent all those savings and as Thanksgiving came and went they began to find their footing again. After a promising home-and-home with the Leafs a convincing win to solidify the gains of a decent stretch of games was needed. A convincing win that was in fact a win in regulation against a team you should handle. New Jersey came knocking asking if we remembered the Home Opener. Whether it was the 50th Anniversary jerseys or 1970s figures present at the game that jogged their memory, the Buffalo Sabres remembered. That game, the second one of this season, was a rout. But this rout makes that rout look like herding cats. When I said this game was over in seven minutes earlier, I mean it was pretty well over in seven minutes. But before we pile on the Devils I thought I’d share with you some thoughts I had about some great players on their roster whom this game made me feel for. Will Butcher: you passed up Buffalo for what you thought would be better. It was for a time but here we are. PK Subban: I love you bud… but this game showed that scary trend is real. Your advanced numbers are garbage, I hope your next destination helps out. Wayne Simmons: Dude, please don’t retire after this. You deserve better than this awfulness. Taylor Hall: well… huh… we both know you’re not going back to Edmonton. When you go win a Cup with Colorado this June please don’t pass the Cup to Nazem Kadri or Nikita Zadorov. For some reason Sabres twitter loves to roast itself during that part of the Final and those two guys minus well be BBQ Chefs. Let’s get down to business.

The Buffalo Sabres came out aggressive. Yeah, I say that a lot here in the second paragraph of postgame; but this time the New Jersey Devils also came out aggressive, AGGRESSIVELY BAD! The Sabres had two goals before the Devils had a shot on goal. That’s right: let me clear my throat played twice before Linus Ullmark was even tested. To be exact the shots were 3-0 Buffalo five minutes in and that was good for a 2-0 lead. Unreal, right? The first goal was right after a Sabres powerplay ended and Jack Eichel was all alone in front of Louis Dominque and just tapped it against the guys pads. It trickled in and everyone was surprised. Hardly two minutes later New Jersey just could not make a clean zone exit and Jeff Skinner had the puck one-on-one with a now annoyed Dominque. Skinner tucked it in far side with a quick little slapper and there are your two goals against zero shots. Up next, not even two minutes later, Jeff Skinner’s third or… whatever non-numbered line we’re calling it, hauling Larsson and Sheary behind like a Christmas tree on a punch buggy mind you, pull off a goal you are more likely to see in the All Star game when all the guys are just trying trick shots they joked about in college then in a real NHL game. Jeff Skinner skates into the zone backwards with speed because the Devils did not know what they were doing in their own zone and crosses the gut of the ice like a figure skater to shoot the puck backwards at the net. That shot didn’t go in because this isn’t a video game, Jeff. However Louis Dominque blocked it with a pad and the resulting rebound was punched in by a Conor Sheary halfway onto his ass. It’s now 3-0 and I think this was the part where Dominque got pulled. No that wasn’t until the first intermission.

After goal three John Hynes and the Devils coaching staff took a time out to try and stop the bleeding. They did for a little bit. It was about ten minutes later when the Devils had finally figured out this shots on net thing but were still giving up D-Zone turnovers juicer than a holiday ham. Conor Sheary just takes a pot shot from a shite angle and Dominque gets his stick glove on it sending it up in the air. Carter Hutton must have watched this play on the bench thinking he’s not alone anymore. The puck goes straight up, and Dominque even watches a little bit of it’s hangtime. Then it just lands in the goal behind him like a letter delivered by a carrier pigeon. What a game already: its 4-0. Sheary skates the bench in celebrating with a “Idk, it just went in” look on his face. All you Monday night folks who paid for the cheapest Sabres tickets of the season so far got your money’s worth and more. But wait, there’s more! We’re in the last minute of the first period. Folks are filing up the stairs to get to the pisser before others and what happens. Casey Mittelstadt just dumps a puck off to Rasmus Asplund in the offensive zone and Asplund just goes “whatever” and one times it like he’s friggin Alex Ovechkin. It went in: 5-0 because this was Buffalo’s night evidently. That was Asplund’s first NHL goal. The kid who just got called up because of injuries and looked like an NHLer gets rewarded faster than maybe any other recent callup. And so the first period ends… *laughs in disbelief* 5-0 Buffalo.

This game was Founders Night. They had family of the Knox Brothers, the founders of the franchise, in attendance for a pregame ceremony. Apparently there was a giant birthday cake and birthday guard. Fun trivia: 50 Years ago on December 2nd the NHL formally granted Buffalo an expansion franchise. The club wouldn’t get named the Sabres for a little over five months but that’s a birthday even if there wasn’t a name. Perhaps the birthday wish was for lots of goals because 5-0 in the first period was not the end by a longshot. Three minutes into the second period PK Subban and Colin Miller have a little spat and the resulting penalties make it 4-on-4. I don’t know how to put this for children: Victor Olofsson sent a puck to heaven. Olofsson unleashed a slapshot that may soon be outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. The broadcast team didn’t know it went in until the horn went off. Ben Mathewson did a 60 frames per second (fps) replay of the goal and there isn’t really more than a couple frames between the slapshot and McKenzie Blackwood realizing the puck had gone in. It was the hardest goal any Sabre has shot this season. 6-0 Sabres and I really want to apologize to the Devils fans in attendance. This had to be embarrassing. I am so sorry. It wouldn’t be a shutout though guys. Zemgus Girgensons got called for tripping and New Jersey made the most of the powerplay when Nico Hischier sauced in a rebound past Linus Ullmark. 6-1 Sabres, the shutout is gone but the Devils are still angry evidently: Casey Mittelstadt is tripped by Kyle Palmieri, the ref blows it against him and before Mittelstadt is up Palmieri launches the puck at him in a temper tantrum. Mind you the Devils are now out-shooting the Sabres 2 to 1 but the Sabres are locking it down. This was the performance we needed. This was our birthday wish for the Sabres. The Sabres made Palmieri and the Devils pay for that trip and Henri Jokiharju fired a laser from the blue line to make it 7-1 for the home team. At this point we just crossed the halfway point of the game. Buffalo has scored a touchdown and Josh Allen didn’t even throw for it. This game was so good 71-year-old Mike Robitaille was telling 51-year-old Rob Ray that advanced stats are just splendid on the broadcast. It was a savagely beautiful disarming of the trap Ray had set. The Sabres were dunking on the Devils and Boomers were dunking on Boomers about advanced stats. This was such a wildly fun game we’re going to look back on it in two weeks and think it was some collective dream we had.

And it seemed meant to be like some kind of fairy tale! The third period had its scary moments, a couple Devils powerplays and a handful of defensive lapses for the home team but the end result never really seemed in question. Buffalo won in regulation 7-1. This game was everything. Jack Eichel’s point streak continues, he now has 38 points in 28 games on pace for a 111-point season. If he doesn’t make the all-star team we can rightfully conclude this league is rigged against Buffalo. Victor Olofsson probably deserves to go as well. Not only is he scoring at 5-on-5 now but he is leading the team in multi-point games; yes even more than Eichel. Friggin Johan Larsson had a career night: he got three points in a game, all on assists, for only the second time in his career. Think about every shocked or mother-of-god meme you got: that was this game. It was memeable! I can’t imagine they dominate like this every night but like, comment and share this blog to join the fun. Sabres After Dark returns Thursday night for a game in Calgary. I want some revenge for the Thanksgiving Eve myself but by that point my end-of-semester crunch week will be winding down, so I’ll probably settle for just some enjoyable sex puns. I got a pair of those oven mitts they gave away for the Thanksgiving Eve game, let’s hope the Sabres stay hot so I need them! Let’s Go Buffalo!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. I don’t think the Bills catch New England for the division but let’s just savor the fact they’re one game back and that such a scenario is a realistic possibility at all. Just enjoying being a fan, I don’t think they catch em either but I’m going to enjoy this well it lasts!

[biofunmy]

They Love Trash – The New York Times

JOSHUA TREE, Calif. — Soph Nielsen was sewing garbage onto her black T-shirt (a chicken wing, a crushed Bud Light can, a plastic fork) and struggling to attach a snarl of crusty pad thai.

“This is to get people to see the trash,” she said, her fingers slick with grease. “We don’t want to be the invisible janitors.” With her distinctive appliqués, that was unlikely.

It was the last day of the Joshua Tree Music Festival, a family-friendly event of didgeridoo sound baths, yoga, crafts, electronica and other familiar fare held at a dusty desert campground for three days in October. Ms. Nielsen, a 25-year-old artist whose medium is trash, was one of 20-odd Trash Pirates working the event.

The Pirates are a loose collective of waste management specialists, to borrow a phrase from Tony Soprano, who make sure events are as sustainable as possible through recycling and composting. They also educate attendees about how to do both properly.

Garbage has long been the uncomfortable fallout of the festival world, and as these gatherings multiply like glow sticks at a Phish concert, stretching the season into a year-round party (hola, Costa Rica), its impact has roused young artists and activists like Ms. Nielsen.

Most Pirates start out as volunteers, helping with trash or performing other tasks so as to attend for free. Then they have their “trash moment,” as the Pirates put it, the epiphany that turns volunteer work into a career, and trash into a calling.

“Your first experience of the mass of it, whether it’s loading dumpsters onto a trailer or driving out to the event grounds when everyone is gone and it’s a sea of trash, is an existential crisis,” Ms. Nielsen said. “You are baptized into compost.”

“You’re either in or you’re out,” she added, echoing the rallying cry of a long-ago counterculture movement that involved a bus, “and it becomes a way of life.”

The events themselves — both community-minded and escapist — are morphing into trash camps: days-long immersions into the politics of waste, with lectures and workshops on developing your garbage-handling skills along with your yoga practice.

Some trash stats are in order. In 2017, according to an environmental impact report, Coachella, in Indio, Calif., was generating over 100 tons of trash each day. Many events are now committed to becoming zero-waste endeavors, or as close to it as possible. High “diversion” rates (the percentage of waste not sent to the landfill) are badges of honor. Last spring, the Trash Pirates brought the Joshua Tree Music Festival’s rate up to 77 percent.

In 2017, Coachella’s diversion rate was just 20 percent, apparently because attendees weren’t using the recycling bins. Veterans of Burning Man and other festivals learn acronyms like MOOP, for “Matter Out of Place,” an umbrella term for trash and anything else that doesn’t occur naturally on a site; cigarette butts, broken tents and human waste are some common examples.

Burning Man has a “Leave No Trace” ethos, but the messy camps of bad Burners are called out each year on the festival’s MOOP Map in the hope that public shaming will be a deterrent next time around.

‘Shepherds of the “Away’’’

While there are many waste organizations dedicated to mitigating the environmental impact of such gatherings, the Trash Pirates are distinguished by their zeal and their punk aplomb.

Take Moon Mandel, 24, a filmmaker and Trash Pirate who was managing the operations that weekend at Joshua Tree. Mx. Mandel is nonbinary, and with their bright orange jumpsuit emblazoned with patches stitched with trash graphics (the recycling whorl and other insignia) they looked like an indie Eagle Scout.

As Oscar the Grouch sang his gruff-voiced hymn “I Love Trash,” one of many trash-friendly songs on the Pirates’ playlist, Mx. Mandel said: “It’s very important for people to see the work we do and understand the human scope of it. We are trying to alter the cultural norms of a throwaway society. We teach them that there’s no ‘away.’ We are the shepherds of the ‘away’ and it’s being buried inside the earth forever.”

And so Mx. Mandel performed trash collections, dancing with colleagues as Oscar warbled under a festive tent with gaily painted bins, and sorting garbage (earning $5 a bag) for those campers too busy or negligent to do it themselves.

To attendees who had dutifully separated their food scraps and recyclables and were tipping them into the appropriate bins, Mx. Mandel called out a hearty, “Yarg!” their preferred Pirate cheer.

“Thank you for composting!” Mx. Mandel praised a young woman scraping scrambled eggs out of a frying pan, and then recited some recycling basics: “You can’t compost paper with too much printing on it, or recycle greasy paper. Single-use bags can be taken to supermarkets in California for recycling, so we are collecting them. Make sure everything is clean. You don’t need to rinse your soda or beer cans. But if your stuff is covered in yogurt, it’s not going to be recycled.”

Mx. Mandel has a policy about not working festivals where organizers are charging for water. “The decommodification of water is one of my core beliefs,” they said.

Mx. Mandel was particularly proud of their cigarette-butt program. For the last two years, they have been collecting butts (200,000 and counting, they said) at festivals and sending them to TerraCycle, a company that teams with manufacturers and retailers to recycle or upcycle all manner of products and materials, including action-figure toys, backpacks and toothbrushes. Cigarette butts are turned into plastic pallets; the tobacco is composted.

Sarah Renner, the operations and site manager for the Joshua Tree Music Festival, wrote in an email that the Trash Pirates are “the down and dirty, real as can be, heroes of the event world.”

The Pirates have handled her festival’s waste for the last four years, sweeping, handing out bags and painting barrels with children. “They don’t just pull trash bags and sort recycling,” she said. “They are on a mission to change the way people think while getting everything to where it needs to go.””

The work is brutal. Heat stroke, sunburn, cuts and bruises are common hazards, as is a dousing with trash juice: the pungent slurry that pours from a trash can and into your armpits when you’re hoisting it over your head.

Close-toed boots are encouraged, but don’t always protect. Mx. Mandel’s foot was sliced open, they said, this past February at a festival in Costa Rica by a severed iguana hand that pierced their boot, but most dangers are what you’d think: nails, screws, shards of glass.

Tools of the trade include MOOP sticks, which are long claws for grabbing trash without having to bend over. These are light and rather delicate, with a nice action, and are precise enough to pick up a grain of rice.

Hand sanitizer and liquid soap are requirements; one Pirate, Moose Martinez, had a Purell bottle clipped to the strap of his over-the-shoulder water bag. Work gloves and thin blue food service gloves are part of the uniform, but many of the Pirates were working in their bare hands.

“We call that raw-dogging,” said Luke Dunn, 33, a musician and preschool teacher, as a colleague with clean hands fed him a chocolate-chip cookie. “You try not to touch your face, you wash a lot.”

On the Pirates’ Facebook page, “Trash Pirates and Waste Naughts,” with over 4,000 followers, they share job tips (a recent post was for waste management at McMurdo Station in Antarctica); inspiration (“It’s Called Garbage Can, Not Garbage Cannot”); and education (news clips on California’s recycling woes and posts reviewing the best trash bags or instructions on how to make compostable confetti out of leaves with a hole puncher).

One long thread discussed cleaning up glitter, a particular scourge of Gay Pride parades.

‘The Lost Boys’

The Trash Pirates formed six years ago when two friends, Caleb Robertson, now 26, and Kirk Kunihiro, 29, then living in the San Francisco Bay Area, wanted to go to festivals for free.

While volunteering for the green teams, as they are called, of these gatherings, Mr. Robertson said, “We came to realize that there was a way to express our zero-waste passions within the event industry.”

They learned their craft at Green Mary, a two-decades-old company dedicated to making events sustainable that was founded by Mary Munat, an environmental activist and former Army reservist.

“They are fast, hard-working, green-hearted people,” she said of the Pirates. “I love their energy and greenness, and I am so glad my age-old eco-passions gave birth to so many little green pirates.”

The Trash Pirates was a nickname they gave each other early on, when festivals were more haphazard, and it stuck. In the beginning, Mr. Robertson, said “It was more seat-of-the-pants. Many of us were living out of our vehicles. That’s the thing: Trash can attract people who don’t feel like they have a place to go, giving people purpose in a space where they had none. Kind of like the Lost Boys. People are interested in the party, but it becomes empty if you don’t have a purpose.”

Next year, they hope to work upward of 30 events. “The work isn’t going to stop, I’m almost scared of it,” Mr. Robertson said, adding that he and many of his colleagues are looking to expand beyond the festivals and tackle community projects in Los Angeles, where he now lives, and beyond.

Mx. Mandel is devoted to filmmaking; Ms. Nielsen to art and activism. “But we are all still united by trash,” Mr. Robertson said. “We recognize that festivals are a stage and a platform to reach people, but we also know that it’s just a Band-Aid and the best thing we can do is to concentrate on government policies and community work.”

Mr. Kunihiro, who also lives in Los Angeles, started his own waste-consulting business, which includes a waste sampling service that analyzes the composition of waste streams — work that makes festival trash seem as clean and fresh, he said, as birthday cake.

He has led tours for fourth graders of recycling plants in the Bay Area; at Joshua Tree, his water bottle was a tiny blue toy recycling bin, a gift from his mother.

Another Pirate, Stephen Chun, talked about the awkward moment when he is asked what he does for a living. “A lot of people are like, ‘Huh, that’s nice. Good for you,” he said. “The feedback over time goes from being, ‘Oh, you’re the trash guy’ to, ‘Oh, you’re a hero.’ Now I say I’m a zero-waste events consultant.”

Ms. Munat said, “People see us going through the recycling and offer us their sandwiches. And we’re like, ‘No, it’s O.K., we’re getting paid.’”

Because trash is ascendant as a problem and a paradigm, it continues to grow as a métier. “In 1995, when I first starting teaching about waste, it was a boutique subject and not considered appropriate for academic study,” said Robin Nagle, a professor of anthropology and environmental studies at New York University who specializes joyfully in garbage.

She has been anthropologist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation for more than a decade; her book “Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks With the Sanitation Workers of New York City” was published in 2013. Professor Nagle is a founder of what’s known as discard studies, a new interdisciplinary field of research examining waste politically, culturally and economically.

“You can take any piece of trash as an object in the world and track it from its raw materials though its journey into the marketplace as a commodity,” she said. “At any of those points it will connect not just to the proliferation of garbage as a form of pollution but a host of any other environmental crises including the big megillah that is climate change.”

Of the Trash Pirates she said, “They are pushing boundaries in wonderful ways. I would be curious to see what they’re doing in 20 years. Do they bounce from this ebullient, youthful thing to something more settled? And will the planet be even closer to the brink of destruction?”

We shall see, but in the meantime, as is their practice, the Pirates swept the Joshua Tree Music Festival campgrounds clean by forming a MOOP line, as it’s known, with each Pirate three to four feet apart and armed with a MOOP stick and a bucket, and moving from the perimeter to the center.

Mx. Mandel said, “Like one amoeba we slowly devour the MOOP.”

Sahred From Source link Fashion and Style

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[dontfindyourcenter]

Chapter 9/Trial 3:  Trial hard with a vengeance

Rules: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177027661290/rules

Previous Chapter: https://dontfindyourcenter.tumblr.com/post/177417565235/chapter-8trial-2-grass-and-electric-boogaloo

Ok guys, I know I’m meant to go to the Battle Royal Dome.  I know the game spent a whole lot of the last chapter name dropping the Battle Royal.  I know that I am, eventually, going to have to go into the Battle Royal Dome.

But I don’t have to go in yet.  And that makes me kind of curious!  Since the very beginning of this game, I’ve been unable to wander too far ahead of the plot development in front of me.  When I had to go to the trial on Brooklet Hill, two unbattlable Sudowoodo stood in the way of route 6; when I first touched down in Heahea City, a man riding a Stoutland blocked the way to the other half of Heahea City; and I can hardly think of a single pathway from one part of Melemele Island to another that wasn’t originally blocked off by either a tauros, a barrier, or the disembodied voice of an NPC.  So with nobody blocking off the alley leading away from the Battle Royal Dome, how far can I actually go without going in?

All the way to the top of Wela Volcano Park, as it turns out!  It’s only when I get to the gates of the third trial when someone finally says “uh, you can’t go in here, you have to have a cutscene introducing the trial captain after the Battle Royal first.”  I’m glad the game is starting to recognise that it doesn’t need to hold the player’s hand quite so tightly, and I celebrate my freedom by picking up all the items I can find both inside the Volcano Park and in the watery area outside on route seven, including the TMs for Thunder Wave and Rock Tomb..  Poor Hau and Gladion are probably going bored out of their minds waiting for me to turn up, and I don’t care one bit.

All right, I think that’s everything.  Let’s see what this Battle Royal fuss is about, shall we?

Oh yeah - the Masked Royal is here to inject the game with campy fun!  Something that I really enjoy about this game is that - as far as I’m aware - his true identity is technically never revealed.  Oh, a lot of people in the game make some wild accusations about it being Professor Kukui, but apart from the two characters sharing their skin colour, little goatee, signature pokemon, and habit of baring their chests… there’s no actual proof.  Ok, also I guess they reveal later in the game that Kukui owns a mask that looks identical to the Masked Royal’s one, but what, are we meant to believe wrestling merch isn’t a thing in this world?  Headcanon:  Kukui is just a massive fanboy of the Masked Royal’s.

The Masked Royal ropes me, Hau and Gladion into a battle royal, then says “and now we have our foursome.  Woo!”  Please don’t call it that, mister Royal, you’re a barely-clothed grown man talking to a group of children.

Anyway, the Battle Royal starts, with Hedwig going toe to toe with Royal’s rockruff, Gladion’s type:null and Hau’s brionne.  Having met Hau before, I know that he’s the weakest player here, so I focus all my attacks on his brionne.  His brionne faints.  The Battle Royal is over.  What a terrible introduction to a cool new feature of the game.

And having finished that, we get the cutscene with Trial Captain Kiawe I was promised!  The camera immediately focuses on his bare chest, where it becomes apparent that he’s wearing a necklace in the shape of a games console’s “+” control pad.  Dude, we get it, you’re a gamer.

I’ve already pointed out how much of an edgelord Gladion is, and he’s at it again here, doing a whole monologue about he and his pokemon have to make it on while covering half of his face with his hand.  “Oh no the disembodied hand from before is back and it wants my eye!  Flee!  Flee for your lives!”  Even Hau picks up on how over-the-top it all is, calling him a “ray of sunshine” as he walks away.  I get the feeling there’s probably a lot of fanfiction about those two.

All that done, my pokemon have been fully healed.  Don’t know who did that or when, but I’ll take it.  And just in time for the third trial, too!  To Wela Volcano Park, everyone!

Since I can remember that this trial doesn’t let you switch the order of your team around between battles, I put Celine McQueen the Slowpoke in first position, because I think she’ll have the best chance against the totem pokemon.  In the meantime, though, I don’t want her getting tired out, so I switch her out to other members of my party to take care of the non-totem pokemon.

First up is a dancing alolan marowak, and since it’s part ghost type, I switch to Jabba the alolan grimer.  Jabba does a fair bit of damage by biting it, but here’s the bit I stupidly overlooked; it’s a marowak.  That means it knows Bone Club.  That leaves Jabba on less than half health.  Correctly assuming that the marowak will use Bone Club again, I switch to Hedwig, who’s immune to ground type moves, and since he outspeeds marowak, he’s able to finish the marowak off with no trouble.

Next up, the internet’s favourite photobombing Hiker, who sends out a magmar.  My initial response is to send out Wash the trumbeak, since he’s a strong pokemon that is nevertheless unlikely to be particularly useful in the totem battle.  The magmar thwarts me, though, by continuously using smokescreen until Wash’s moves have no chance of hitting at all.  Frustrated, I apply a super potion to Jabba and send him out again, and he’s able to beat the magmar with a couple of Rock Tombs.

Finally, the totem Salazzle!  Her aura flares to life and boosts her special defense, which frankly stops Celine being quite the secret weapon I was hoping for - the only psychic- and water-type moves she currently knows are both special attacks, and her special attack isn’t her best stat to begin with.  I think this battle’s going to be a toughie.  She starts things off with a Toxic attack, while Celine uses yawn, and then a wild salandit gets summoned to join in the fun.  Feeling like Celine might be more useful later on now that she’s already yawned, I switch out Nina.  It’s a good thing I do too, because the salandit uses venoshock, which does double damage on poisoned targets.  

Nina can take a hit, though, and now the totem is asleep, so she doesn’t have to worry about being hit by toxic.  I decide that it might be useful to use sand-attack a couple of times, hoping that I’ll get the totem’s accuracy low enough by the time she wakes up that I won’t have to worry about Toxic quite so much.  No such luck though, because the supporting salandit uses taunt, stopping me from using any other status moves.  I use rock throw instead, and end up doing quite a bit of damage before she wakes up and uses toxic.  Luckily, the salandit only uses poison gas, which is useless with Nina already poisoned.  Still, time to switch out to someone new, I think.

I choose to send out Wash, the only pokemon on full health without a major weakness against my opponents.  It’s at this point that the single sand-attack I managed to use earlier surprisingly pays off; Salazzle’s attack misses, and Wash is able to use two whole attacks against it during his time in battle.  Even better, one of those moves is pluck, so I can rob the Salazzle of an advantage I didn’t even know it had - a Petaya berry, which (had it not been stolen) would have raised her special attack as a result of that very hit.

Less fortunately, Wash is only on 8 HP now, so I have to switch pokemon again.  I’m quickly learning that this is a pretty major disadvantage when you’re facing two pokemon against one, since it gives both opponents a free move.  So even though the salazzle won’t be able to take another hit, the pokemon I switch in will have to be able to take four hits in order to deal that finishing blow (unless it manages to outspeed the salazzle, but the only pokemon likely to do that is Hedwig, who definitely can’t take three hits from these guys).  Since both my opponents seem to mostly use poison-type moves, I think my best bet is Jabba.

I was wrong. Salazzle uses Flame Burst and it does much more damage than I was expecting, and salandit uses scratch.  Jabba faints.  ...That’s not great.

Ok, wait, maybe I can use a revive and still salvage this.  Celine might be poisoned, but she’s on nearly-full health.  If I let out Celine and use the revive, she’ll still be able to take two hits, and then I’ll be able to switch pokemon to someone else and be really sure that salazzle won’t use flame burst, because that’s a terrible move to use on a slowpoke.  It’ll be ok.  Here we go.

I was wrong again guys, venoshock did more damage that I was expecting too, Celine dies.  Fuck.  

I guess it’s time to accept that not everyone is going to make it out alive.

Resigned to that fate, I actually manage to finish the battle without all that much trouble.  With Celine dead, I’m able to send out Hedwig without giving the other two any free moves.  Hedwig doesn’t outspeed the salazzle in the end, but does manage to evade her attack and finish her off.  At this point, I realise that I actually already know all four of the salandit’s moves and none of them are fire-type moves, so I switch in Digit Al, who beats it easily.  But with Celine dead, it’s a bittersweet victory.  I’ll really have to train more before the next trial.  Sorry, Celine McQueen.  

Still, on the plus side, the average quality of my team’s nicknames has just shot up.

Weird plot hole here, by the way.  Kiawe says “the totem pokemon was carrying a firium z.  It is yours now.”  That’s a bare-faced lie!  The totem was carrying that petaya berry, and even totems can’t carry more than one item!  What’s that all about?  Still, Kiawe gives me ten quick balls, which should be helpful for catching Celine’s replacement.  I can let him off for telling a weird lie.

On my way out of the mountain, I catch a cubone to fill Celine’s slot in my party.  Since I know she’ll evolve into an alolan marowak, I call her Donna, after the Mamma Mia character.  You see, she’s a dancing queen, and there’s a fire within her soul.  Could have been worse, when all is said and done.

End of chapter 9

[andreblogson]

The Mystery of Jim McCormick: Solved

Have you ever looked at the JAWS list for pitchers? It can be an infuriatingly frustrating experience. Let’s say that you’re trying to make a case that a pitcher like Mike Mussina, Roy Halladay or Curt Schilling (I know, I know) deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. And let’s say you’re using Bill James’ tried-and-true Keltner List as a guideline. Question #10 on that list is, “Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the Hall of Fame?” Well, if you take Roger Clemens out of the equation, the answer to that question is still always going to be no. Because the best pitcher not currently in Cooperstown (according to JAWS, anyway) is always Jim McCormick, some guy who pitched from 1878-1887. For teams like the Indianapolis and Cleveland Blues, the Cincinnati Outlaw Reds, the Providence Grays and the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. I mean, the guy played a year in the Union Association, whatever that was. He also pitched from 50 feet his whole career, underhand until 1884, with batters having the privilege of calling for a low or a high pitch. During his career, 9 balls equaled a walk. Then 8. Then 6. Then 5. He never even made it to 1893, when the distance was moved to 60-feet-6-inches. And yet there he is, like a sore thumb, #18 on JAWS. 

You might want to dismiss McCormick on era alone, but two pitchers from the 1870′s and five other pre-1884 pitchers are in the Hall of Fame, officially as pitchers. Al Spalding and Candy Cummings are in as ‘pioneers’. The rest won 300 games. And if McCormick had won 300 instead of 265, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. Plus, he ranks higher on JAWS than Pud Galvin (310 wins), Mickey Welch (307) and Old Hoss Radbourn (309). Wins have been historically overvalued. And these guys may have been throwing underhand from 50 feet, but they were still trying to deceive the batters. Candy Cummings is in the Hall as the (debatable) inventor of the curveball, for chrissakes. And some of these underhand pitchers were actually really effective at deceiving batters. There were 10 no-hitters before 1884 and two of them were by Larry Corcoran of the White Stockings. Underhand. Then he pitched another one in 1884. If you’re doing math at home, that’s three no-hitters for a guy from an era that gets dismissed as irrelevant. 

It may not have looked like modern pitching. But that means it shouldn’t have looked like modern hitting either. And yet nine different pre-1884 position players are in the Hall, all while calling for high or low pitches and apparently padding their career stats. Go figure. 

So if we decide that pre-1884 pitchers and pre-1893 pitchers are Hall-of-Fame-worthy, which I think we can, let’s take a look at Jim McCormick. And let’s use the aforementioned Keltner List to sort things out.  

1. Was he ever regarded as the best player in baseball? Did anybody, while he was active, ever suggest that he was the best player in baseball?

I don’t think so. I never would have given him a league Cy Young Award, although he would have come close in 1880. He did put up some massive black ink in 1880 and 1882 due to sheer workload. Like, insane 19th Century oh-my-god-600-innings workloads. And he led the National League in ERA in 1883 and the UA in ERA in ‘84. 

So I think one could make a decent argument for McCormick being the best pitcher in 1880. But I would say the best he could hope for was #2, which is not nothing. It’s just not a yes.         

2. Was he the best player on his team?

Yes, But... These teams didn’t necessarily have a staff, per se. So from 1879-1882, McCormick was THE pitcher for the Cleveland Blues (and also player-manager in 1879-80 and ‘82). He also pitched on two-man rotations, where he was the better of the two for Cleveland in 1883 and with Cincinnati of the UA in 1884. He was the #2 guy in Indianapolis in 1878 and #2 with Cleveland in 1884 (yes, he played in two leagues that year). And then he took a backseat to John Clarkson in Chicago in 1885 and ‘86 before ending his career the #3 guy in Pittsburgh. 

3. Was he the best player in baseball at his position? Was he the best player in the league at his position?

To expand upon the answer to #1, over McCormick’s own career (1878-1887), McCormick is 4th in fWAR after Pud Galvin, Tim Keefe and Jim Whitney. I think the best he can do is #2 to Pud Galvin if you go 1879-1883 or ‘84. It’s not helping that Whitney is not a Hall of Famer, is not in the Hall of Stats, has a 31 on Standards and is 52nd on JAWS. And just for fun, here are the top 10 single-season fWARs during McCormick’s career.         

Toad Ramsey 10.9 1886

John Clarkson 10.9 1887 (HOF)

Toad Ramsey 10.9 1887

Tim Keefe 10.8 1883 (HOF)

Pud Galvin 10.7 1884 (HOF)

Guy Hecker 10.4 1884

John Clarkson 10.1 1885 (HOF)

Matt Kilroy 10.0 1886

Charlie Buffinton 9.9 1884

Charley Radbourn 9.5 1884 (HOF)

4. Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?

McCormick’s teams were usually pretty bad until he went to Chicago in 1885 and 1886, where he won two pennants with the White Stockings. 

5. Was he good enough that he could play regularly after passing his prime?

He only played for 10 seasons. So maybe not. But it’s not like these old time pitchers played that long. Amos Rusie also only pitched for 10 seasons. Old Hoss Radbourn pitched for 11 seasons. John Clarkson pitched for 12. Mickey Welch pitched for 13. There were major rule changes along the way. Dudes arms basically fell off from those insane workloads. So taken into the context of the times, it was a fairly long career.  

6. Is he the very best baseball player in history who is not in the Hall of Fame?

No. He’s 53rd on Hall of Stats for non-Hall-of-Famers. His 51 standards is behind Roger Clemens and Mike Mussina, not to mention Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield, Larry Walker, Rafael Palmeiro, Pete Rose and Sammy Sosa. And he trails Clemens on JAWS for pitchers.       

7. Are most players who have comparable statistics in the Hall of Fame?

Vic Willis, Old Hoss Radbourn, Red Faber and Burleigh Grimes are similar on BBR Similarity Scores. On Hall of Stats, 18 of the 20 most similar pitchers are deemed Hall-worthy. 

8. Do the player’s numbers meet Hall of Fame standards?

McCormick’s Standards score is a 51, which would make him above average for a Hall of Famer. 265 wins, a 2.43 ERA, a 118 ERA+. His Hall of Stats number is 105, which would also place him in the Hall, if not towards the bottom of the list (201/226). And that’s with a - 20% adjustment for anything before 1893.            

9. Is there any evidence to suggest that the player was significantly better or worse than is suggested by his statistics?

Yeah. I think a lot of his WAR is due to the amount of innings he ate up in Cleveland from 1879-1882, plus that combined NL and UA year in 1884. As Hall of Stats mentions, he’s the only pitcher with more than three seasons of 500+ innings. And he did it five times. That could be impressive or a reason to dismiss his totals (hence their 20% adjustment), depending on how you look at it. He also never had to pitch from 60′6″, which is something major to consider. His bWAR is also significantly different than his fWAR (72.2 to 40.0). BBR gives him a 7.8 WAR in 24 games in the Union Association. FanGraphs gives him a 3.7.

At the same time, McCormick was consistently in the top 10 in fWAR, FIP and ERA. He finished in the top 10 in all 3 six different times in the NL and once in the UA. And even if there weren’t very many teams and there weren’t very many pitchers to begin with, nobody else did that. Not one. From 1871-1895, Jim McCormick was the only pitcher with six elite seasons. I call that ‘the Koufax Rule’. And the only other 19th Century pitchers who meet that criteria were Cy Young (who was a freak and did it 16 times), Kid Nichols (7) and Amos Rusie. Through 2017, only 45 pitchers qualify for the Koufax Rule (which doesn’t really exist, it’s just a thing I invented) and only McCormick, Babe Adams, Tommy Bridges (7), Dutch Leonard, Curt Simmons, Roger Clemens (13), Mike Mussina (10), Kevin Brown (7) and Curt Schilling (8) have done it, are eligible for the Hall of Fame and remain outside.                   

10. Is he the best player at his position who is eligible for the Hall of Fame?

On Jaws? Other than Roger Clemens, yes. On Hall of Stats, 19 pitchers are ahead of him since he got adjusted 20%. And for Standards, it’s Clemens and Mussina.   

11. How many MVP-type seasons did he have? Did he ever win an MVP award? If not, how many times was he close?

In 1878, Will White is my pick for Cy Young and I have McCormick 7th. It is funny to me to name any pre-1890 pitching awards after the actual Cy Young, but whatever. Al Spalding Award? Fine, but that would confuse everyone.      

In 1879, I would have said John Ward was the NL Cy Young winner. But I would have given McCormick 5th. And granted, there were only 8 teams at this point. But only 6 pitchers finished in the top 10 in WAR, FIP and ERA out of 15 qualified.     

In 1880, the race between Ward and McCormick would have been tight. But the slight edge would go to Ward again. Now is as good a time as any to remind you that John Ward is in the Hall of Fame as a shortstop. 

My pick for 1881 would be George Derby of the Detroit Wolverines. I think McCormick gets 4th place. Nobody else was ‘elite’ 4 seasons in a row like that, by the way.      

1882′s NL Cy Young would go to Charley Radbourn. I think McCormick is worthy of 7th. So he stayed consistent.   

I’d give 1883′s NL Cy to Jim Whitney and put McCormick 4th. 

So in 1884, McCormick also played in the Union Association. I would have given Dupee Shaw the Cy Young in the UA, with McCormick probably at #3.  

That’s 7 top 10 finishes. More than anyone else in his era until actual Cy Young. 

12. How many All-Star-type seasons did he have? How many All-Star games did he play in? Did most of the players who played in this many All-Star games go into the Hall of Fame?

When there’s mostly just one league, you can’t really do an All-Star Game. But sure, I’ll say seven All-Star Games would be generous.  

13. If this man were the best player on his team, would it be likely that the team could win the pennant?

Not quite. And that might hurt him.  

14. What impact did the player have on baseball history? Was he responsible for any rule changes? Did he introduce any new equipment? Did he change the game in any way?

Nothing seems to pop up here. 

15. Did the player uphold the standards of sportsmanship and character that the Hall of Fame, in its written guidelines, instructs us to consider?

He was probably a hard boozer, but there’s nothing flagrant to dock him for.  

Conclusion: McCormick was never the best pitcher in baseball. He just pitched a massive workload as the only pitcher in Cleveland, which was probably only manageable because of the 50-feet-and-underhand rules. But he stayed consistent in that role, more consistent than other pitchers of his very specific era, and compiled some pretty impressive career stats along the way, especially for a 10-year career. Things, ehhh, start to break down a little from there.  

Here are the top pitchers in fWAR for 1871-1883 (50-feet-and-underhand) and 1871-1892 (all 50 feet).  

1871-1883 (13 Seasons) fWAR

Bobby Mathews  35.4

Tommy Bond     34.6

Pud Galvin          33.8 (HOF)

Al Spalding         31.3 (HOF)

Jim McCormick  25.0

1871-1892 (22 Seasons) fWAR

Tim Keefe              67.9 (HOF)

Pud Galvin            67.3 (HOF)

John Clarkson      63.6 (HOF)

Bobby Mathews.   54.2

Charley Radbourn 49.3 (HOF)

Jim Whitney          47.5

Charlie Buffinton  46.4

Tony Mullane.       42.5

Mickey Welch       41.7 (HOF)

Silver King            40.5

Jim McCormick   40.0

And here he is compared to the 300-game winners and high WAR pitchers of the same era. This is essentially JAWS using fWAR.

John Clarkson       69.9    56.6   63.25 (HOF)

Tim Keefe              69.9   50.3    60.10 (HOF)

Pud Galvin             67.3   48.4   57.85 (HOF)

Bobby Mathews.   54.2   39.9.  47.05

Jim Whitney           47.5   44.1   45.80

Charley Radbourn   49.3  40.6   44.95 (HOF)

Charlie Buffinton     46.4  41.5   43.95

Silver King               44.8  42.8   43.80

Tony Mullane           47.4   37.2   42.30

Toad Ramsey           37.6   37.6   37.60

Jim McCormick      40.0  34.5   37.25

Mickey Welch          41.7  32.4  37.05 (HOF)

And here are those three pitchers I mentioned at the top of the blog, just for comparison. 

Curt Schilling          79.8   49.8   64.80

Mike Mussina          82.2  41.4   61.80

Roy Halladay            65.2 47.1   56.15

The flaw in BRR JAWS is probably the flaw in bWAR. If you use bWAR, McCormick looks like a Hall of Fame shoe-in, where you even have to deduct 20% from his score to make him come back down to earth. If you use fWAR, he’s the 11th-best pitcher of his era.  

The Hall of Stats seems iffy about him. Jay Jaffe (who invented JAWS) doesn’t even mention McCormick in his Cooperstown book (favoring Tony Mullane over Tommy Bond, Charlie Buffinton, Bob Carruthers, Bobby Mathews and McCormick due to fame). I actually tweeted at Jaffe for some guidance on this. He essentially shrugged and sent me to a Twitter thread from November of 2017, where he said to take pre-1893 stats with a grain of salt and then deferred to Adam Darowski (creator of Hall of Stats and chair of SABR’s Overlooked Nineteenth Century Base Ball Legends committee). If anyone would have answers, it’d be that guy. Darowski basically said McCormick had no traction in the Overlooked Legend project due to lack of fame and/or pioneering story. Nobody there sees McCormick as a priority. Everyone seems good with the number of 19th Century pitchers already enshrined. And everyone would prefer to focus more on overlooked pioneers of the game.  

In the end, bWAR for pitchers is either flawed for 19th Century pitchers or it’s flawed in total. You can judge for yourself. So, is Jim McCormick a Hall of Famer? I’d say no. 

But we might want to take a look at Bobby Mathews.  

[heather-lyyn]

I’m going to be real with you guys. I don’t watch many modern mainland Chinese dramas, which is why this list is so short. I adore historical Chinese dramas, but modern ones are very hit or miss for me. I don’t know if this will sound insensitive, but I hate hate hate the way characters treat one another in these dramas. I understand and accept the cattiness of women in harem dramas because they are literally fighting for the lives of themselves and their families. What excuse do these people have nowadays? I find that too many modern dramas rely heavily on the characters destroying one another—for dumb and vapid reasons—to move the plot along.

Title: Love O2O Synopsis: Xiao Nai is a gaming expert who, courtesy of his basketball skills, academic excellence, swimming talent and game company presidency, also happens to be the most popular student on campus. When he first comes across the gorgeous computer science major Bei Wei Wei, the infinitely talented wunderkind immediately falls in love. But it’s not Bei’s looks that he notices; it’s the ridiculous mastery with which she is commanding her guild and owning everyone in an online multiplayer game that makes her impossible to forget. Now, Xiao Nai must use his skills both in real life and online to capture the adorable but dorky Bei’s heart. But does their love have the XP to succeed, or will this relationship never level up? Stats: 30 Episodes / 2016 Thoughts: Love O2O is probably one of the better modern Chinese dramas. The overall story is sweet and well realized. I had some problems here or there(FULL Review Here), but Yang Yang was especially well cast and pretty much carried this drama to the top of this list. Score: 8.5/10

Title: Fiancee Synopsis: Lan Xiao Yi left her job in Nanjing to follow her boyfriend Tian Fei to Shanghai. In Shanghai, Xiao Yi struggles with her low-paying job but is happy to be with Tian Fei. At the same time, Tian Fei's colleague Xiao Lu, a new college graduate, has fallen in love with Tian Fei and is determined to snatch him. As emotions become more tangled, Tian Fei cheats and Xiao Lu fakes a pregnancy to force Tian Fei to marry her. He leaves Xiao Yi, not knowing that she is actually pregnant. Stats: 20 Episodes / 2013 Thoughts: The synopsis doesn’t mention Dennis Oh’s character, Hou Zi, at all, but believe me, we’re all here for him. Hou Zi pretty much fell for Xiao Yi at first sight, and after she disappears because of the pregnancy, he’s still holding a torch for her years later when he finds her again. The nice thing is that even though we as the audience know that he fully intends to be marry her(he’s says so himself to his sister), he’s never pushy with her or overbearing. He’s her best friend until she needs him to be something else. The only downside of this drama is the second lead couple, Tian Fei and Lulu. Their scenes are just them fighting constantly. Tian Fei’s mother is also a gross human being so fast forward through their scenes and you’re golden. Score: 8.0/10

Title: Boss and Me Synopsis: Big conglomerate president Feng Teng has a younger sister, with a very rare blood type, who needs a transfusion. He finds an employee at his company named Xue Shan Shan and asks her for a blood donation. Afterwards brother and sister are rather indebted to Shan Shan, but rather than using Feng Teng's typical method of paying her off, his sister suggests sending her nutritious packed lunches so Shan Shan can recover from the blood loss and to make the thank you more personal. Shan Shan loves to eat and her enjoyment of the lunches, along with her general bright and sunny personality, slowly start melting cold Feng Teng's heart.... Stats: 33 Episodes / 2014 Thoughts: This was a cute drama, though it suffers from the cliche of the ‘poor girl isn’t accepted by the rich guy’s family’. I’m sorry the 21st century began almost two decades ago and that idea is so played out. :/ Score: 7.5/10

Title: Let’s Go Watch the Meteor Shower Synopsis: Chu Yu Xun is a very clever and smart high school girl. Her dream is to get into the prestigious Aliston University, in which she managed to get in with her uncle's help. Murong Yun Hai, Duanmu Lei, Shangguan Rui Qian, and Ye Shuo are the four richest students in the university, and they became the idol of all the girls there. These guys are not happy with their lives their parents planned for them. They perform a series of pranks to get attention from the headmistress to expel them from the university. Yu Xun fights for justice for the victims of the group and she becomes their instant target, trying all sorts of methods to expel her. Meanwhile, Yu Xun gets protection from Duanmu Lei, who was her childhood friend. Through fighting and arguing, Yun Hai starts to fall in love with Yu Xun but faces numerous rejections. H4 and Yu Xun eventually become friends. Through hardship, they all grew up and learned to control their own lives, chose their own futures, and to strive for their dreams. Stats: 36 Episodes / 2009 Thoughts: Alright, let’s be real. This is a total rip off of Hana Yori Dango/Boys over Flowers. Allegedly the production company didn’t want to shell out for the rights, so they just made this drama, which is similar but different enough to stave off a lawsuit. I remember watching this a few years ago and actually enjoying it, but I recently went to revisit it and I wasn’t as enamoured. I’d recommend this for new drama watchers, but not necessarily for seasoned drama fans. Score: 7.2/10

Title: Pretty Li Hui Zhen Synopsis: Li Hui Zhen used to be gorgeous, but years of declining family fortune added much pain to her life, and her looks slowly drifted away. Her friend Bai Hao Yu, on the other hand, was once an ordinary looking guy and grew up to be suave, successful, and immensely likable. So when she comes across him years later and witnesses their reversal of fortune, Li Hui Zhen is too embarrassed to even meet him and instead asks her stylish friend and roommate Xia Qiao to assume her identity. Stats: 40 Episodes / 2017 Thoughts: So let’s skip over the fact that Dilreba Dilmurat is probably one of the prettiest peeps on the planet and that the producers apparently think that putting freckles on her and making her hair curly somehow makes her ‘ugly’ . . . This drama was way too freaking long. That being said, I really did enjoy the interactions between Hui Zhen and her bff as well as enjoying Zhang Bin Bin’s acting as always. Score: 7.0/10

Title: Scarlet Heart 2 Synopsis: Zhang Xiao is a southerner, who moved to Beijing working as an OL, with dreams of romance and a stable job. By coincidence, she gets a job at a conglomerate ‘Zhen Tian'. Like all newbie, she’s bullied and stepped on, the saving grace is her boss Yin Zheng. As she gets the hang of it, she and Yin Zheng develops mutual feelings for each other, when a gentle, considerate guy Kang Xi Hang steps into Zhang’s world. Yin Zheng, Kang Xi Hang both are fore-runners in next in line inheriting the firm. Zhang is twirled into the eye of the corporate battles. After twists and turns, Zhang finally realizes where her heart is at, and bravely chooses to spend her future with her true love. Stats: 35 Episodes / 2014 Thoughts: This is the sequel to the time-travel drama Scarlet Heart(which is on my historical master list), but the drama literally throws that all away in the first couple of episodes by making the lead character forget that ever happened. This is a really crazy drama that is totally all over the place, and the only reason i would recommend it is that the two leads, Cecilia Liu and Nicky Wu, are actually married IRL so their chemistry is totally real. Score: 6.8/10

Title: I Love My President Though He is a Psycho Synopsis: Shi Xiao Nian is a third-rate cartoonist living an ordinary life. Until one day Gong Ou, a rich CEO of an IT company, suffering from paranoid personality disorder, captures her and asks her to return their child, which she “supposedly” gave birth to 3 years before. He utilizes every mean to force an answer and to pursue her, including low-EQ techniques. But as he faces her gentleness and courage, they fall in love… Stats: 10 Episodes / 2017 Thoughts: I tried watching this, but the subs were very poor and so while I could get the gist, it was hard to enjoy . . . well that and the fact that the male lead is literally a psycho. The guy is straight up disturbed—I mean padded walls and pills in a cup disturbed. His family is rich so he’s able to do illegal things like kidnapping and torturing women without consequences. He can act normal when he needs to but underneath that, he’s completely unhinged. He ends up falling for the girl he kidnapped, but of course we have to throw in the cliche of his family not accepting her like ‘wtf, your son is crazy! Take what you can get!’ Score: 6.0/10

Title: Stay With Me Synopsis: Li Wei Wei is a 30-year-old successful fashion designer. But a near-drowning makes her lose the memory of the past seven years of her life. In her current life, Wei Wei is surprised to learn that she had broken up with her boyfriend, Chen Yi Du, and is now engaged to a man she does not remember, Qi Cheng. Unable to believe her life choices, Wei Wei tries to find out whatcaused her to break up with Yi Du while Qi Cheng tries to win back his fiancée’s heart. Which man is Wei Wei’s one true love? Stats: 38 Episodes / 2017 Thoughts: I went into this drama expecting to like it because it has Wang Kai starring and I loved him in Nirvana in Fire, but after this drama and ‘When a Snail Falls in Love’, I’ve discovered that the man has no range. He was perfectly cast in Nirvana in Fire, but now he’s just doing the same thing over and over. Joe Chen on the other hand, used to be one of my favorite actresses, but whoever is picking her scripts the last couple of years isn’t doing her any favors. Her character here is whiny, manipulative, and just straight up unlikeable. This drama was boring and I quit it after like five episodes. Score: 2.0/10

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I Own A Bike Instead Of A Car: 5 Reasons Everyone Hates Me

I’m one of those dipshits who never got around to getting a driver’s license. As someone who hates being the designated driver, I am truly blessed by this. However, it also means that I have to rely on public transport for most of my getting-around needs. In recent times, I’ve gotten sick of pee-smelling subway cars and delightfully cramped buses, so I’ve attempted to cheat code my way out of all of that jazz by riding a bicycle to most everywhere. And man, that has revealed a whole new, previously hidden world to me.

A whole new, hidden, terrifying world.

5

You’ll Always Reek Of Ass

Just so we’re clear, I’m not one of those spandex missiles you see Lance Armstrong-ing their way through the city at breakneck speeds. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not an exercise kind of person at all. My workout is of the “bare minimum you need to do to keep resembling a human being” variety, and is exclusively motivated by an innate need to be able to execute a perfect dropkick at anyone or anything I feel has slighted me. At best, I’m the Super Mario of bicyclists: medium speed, medium stats, a little too chubby to pass for an athlete, and I would secretly like to swap my bike for a go-kart.

Still, bicycling is a physical activity, even for someone like me, who uses it exclusively for transportation purposes and prefers to ride at un-exhausting speeds. No matter how slowly you ride, though, you’ll strain yourself way beyond most other forms of transportation. Which means sweat. Which means swamp ass. Which obviously shouldn’t be a problem. Obviously you take a shower and/or change your clothes after you ride to, say, work. Obviously. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

For me, that mentality lasted for about a week.

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I’m sure that there are people who ride a bicycle everywhere and each time dutifully spend 15 minutes showering and changing clothes at their destination, but I’ve never actually met one of these folks, and I sure as shit am not one myself. It’s not that you don’t want to keep clean; it’s just that when you spend the day zipping around on a self-powered vehicle, you’d need three changes of clothing even without the whole showering thing. No one has time for that shit, so it’s easier to just do your best to clean yourself up a bit and resign yourself to the faint waft of eau d’taint following you wherever you go. So anything under five miles tends to be “Eh, whatever,” while longer rides might warrant a quick change of underwear and a baby wipe treatment to the armpits (which technically makes my hygiene habits the same as Brad Pitt’s … ladies).

Still, this is not necessarily a life-ruining thing. Hell, people might not even notice your secret grossness. But it’s not like you can ask a friend for an opinion, because …

4

Cycling Can Turn You Into A Social Pariah

One of the things I was most surprised about is that social interaction and cycling don’t go too well together, regardless of how well you maintain your stench.

In tons and tons of social situations, you’ll find yourself having to explain precisely WHY you use a bike right off the bat, and it can become a big thing. Sure, your boss probably values that you try to keep in shape, but when it comes to pretty much anything else, you’re screwed. Dating? Good luck, you now rely on the other person to haul you both around, which in turn can easily make them think of you as someone who’s not financially responsible enough to own a car. Heading for a night out with your friends? They’ll take their car, or an Uber, or public transport. You’ll be the fucker who turns up on a bike and has to change clothes — or worse, won’t change them, so that everyone can have a round of beers and another round of “What’s that smell? Is that cheese? Did Pauli bring cheese?”

Then you have to deal with the fact that you have a bicycle with you … all night. So now your friends have to deal with you. “No, guys, I know we agreed to meet with the rest of the group a few blocks from here, but I just found the perfect spot to park my bike, and can’t leave it behind, and don’t feel like unpacking it from the 12,587 chains and locks I need to make sure it doesn’t get stolen.” It’ll get old after a while, and even if you don’t mean to make a huge deal about it, it tends to become one, because from the group’s point of view, you’re now the shithead who insisted on bringing a totally unnecessary and hindering large object with you. As a social faux pas, it’s like heading out for a beer with your best friend and bringing Alex Jones as a surprise avec.

So you become Bicycle Guy within your circle of friends. “We’re heading out for a drink, should I call Bicycle Guy?” “Nah, fuck him. He’ll just haul that damn bike with him all night, whining about how he can’t leave it out of his sight.” Your range of operations is also waaaay shorter than it would be for someone with a car — after a certain geographical distance, you’re going to be thinking long and hard on whether or not the strain to get there is worth it. And then there’s the fact that the carrying load of a bicycle is you and a backpack. Buy a new piece of furniture, and you’re shit out of luck unless you can bug some friend with a car to help you. Basically, you’re extra baggage to all of your acquaintances — from your point of view, everyone is that one friend with a pickup truck who people are always asking for a favor. From their point of view, you’re that fucker who keeps asking.

3

Maintenance Is Bullshit In Ways You Wouldn’t Believe

Because you don’t have to bother with gas or parking, cycling can seem like a pretty simple mode of transportation: Just hop on and pedal until you’re where you need to be. I know that’s what I thought when I first started. However, the grim reality is that you’ll be spending way more time on hands-on maintenance than with a car. 50 percent of bike ownership is shouting “What the hell is wrong with you?” at it.

For a relatively uncomplicated mechanical device, there are so, so, so many ways a bicycle can break down — which it absolutely will at the slightest provocation, unless you keep tabs on it. You have to constantly check that the nuts and bolts are tightened. Brake pads and lines need replacing. The tires will pop if you give them a sharp look, and magically keep leaking tiny amounts of air so that you have to check ’em all the time. The more often you take off the wheel and chain in order to replace tires, the more wear and tear you get on the stuff that holds it all together, so it becomes super easy to strip the bolts or make it to where they simply won’t stay tightened. Almost all bikes eventually get loose handlebars. The chain needs to be kept oiled and clean. Everything that can rust will rust super easily, so rain will wreck your shit. And that’s just the beginning. Here’s a handy list of 101 fucking things you’ll need to keep in mind unless you want to turn your bicycle into an expensive faceplant machine.

Sure, you could just take the bike to the shop every time something breaks, but lets face it, you won’t. That shit will set you back hundreds and hundreds of dollars over time just to keep the thing in working condition. You have to know how to fix all that shit, and how to recognize the various irregularities in the riding experience and minuscule noises that indicate potential problems. It’s a pain in the ass to the point where it’s easy to just end up ignoring the issues and ride on the solid principle of “Man, I really hope nothing breaks today. Better look into that strange noise tomorrow.”

This is obviously not the best move, as I once found out when one of the pedals (which had been acting a little funny for a week or two) snapped straight off mid-kick. In related news, completely and unexpectedly losing your balance while riding is a strange feeling that apparently leads into a kickass somersaults and a keen newfound interest in bicycle maintenance. In even more related news, turns out helmets are not just for decoration.

Not that maintaining your bike helps jack shit if you don’t know what you’re doing. I once accidentally tightened a nut holding the back wheel too much, so it chose to snap when I was riding down a particularly steep alley. This caused the wheel to partially jump off its fork, which also fucked up the brakes, seeing as they rely on the wheels to be where they’re supposed to. With no way to brake and the wheel stuck jumping up and down in the fork in a way that effectively turned the bike into a rodeo horse, I did the only thing I could do: I let out a passable impression of the Wilhelm Scream and rammed my feet against the asphalt, trying to ignore the fact that this also meant that my dick was slamming with equal force against the top tube. That was the longest five seconds of my life. I managed to stop roughly 15 feet before a wall. I still have the pair of Converses with the soles burned through somewhere in my attic.

2

Cyclists Are Despised By Everyone Else On The Road

The neighborhood I live in has a Facebook group, because of course it fucking does. I joined because area news and various local grievances are generally great for entertainment purposes, but I immediately found out that roughly 70 percent of all conversations in the group revolve around two subjects: the acceptable and unacceptable places where a dog can poop (nowhere and everywhere, respectively), and the way bicyclists are unrepentant assholes who endanger everyone’s lives.

This is not an isolated thing. Bikes versus cars is a famously bloody flame war, both online and in real life, and once you bring pedestrians in the mix, the shit soup is good and stirred. If you’re invested in the subject, you know the arguments: “Bicyclists are law-breaking dicks who zoom dangerously around in traffic.” “Cities are designed for cars.” “Cyclists are weenies who are trying to save the environment, or hipsters, or annoying fitness nuts.” And that shit bleeds way into real life. There are drivers who more or less deliberately hit cyclists and lose their complete and utter shit when dealing with them. There are cyclists who fatally run into pedestrians and call it “unavoidable.” I was kind of hoping I could find stories about pedestrians who eat cars or something to make this a rock-paper-scissors analogy, but it turns out pedestrians are just generally fucked.

Of course, this entire situation is because of a very specific group of people: assholes. Every mode of transport has its share, and for cyclists, it’s the jerkfaces who zip around in the traffic with nothing but an “I could squeeze through here” mindset, and often at way too high speeds. No one notices the people who ride their bikes carefully and follow the rules. It’s the assholes and their various accidents and close calls who hog the publicity, which leads to many drivers perceiving cyclists as hostile yet fragile meat missiles capable of nothing but erratic, borderline-illegal turns and twists. For pedestrians, it’s the same, but you’re a silent, fast meat missile riding on 30 pounds of cold murder steel.

But hey, let the rest of the world hate you. At least you still have your fellow bicyclists, who totally understand your thing and like you. You can always hang out with them, right? R-right?

1

Bicyclists Hate Each Other, Too

Ha! Plot twist!

Individual groups of cyclists may be tight, but even casual bike-riding will reveal that cyclists as a whole are an insanely fragmented demographic, and most of the splinter groups are wary of each other. When you buy a motorcycle, it’s like joining a club, and you happily wave your hand at passing bikers. When you buy a bike, you get passive-aggressive “11 types of cyclists we all know” lists from Cycling Weekly which make no secret about the fact that all 11 types are kind of dipshits. That article is exclusively about the spandex-clad hardcore riders, by the way — the very people who read fucking Cycling Weekly in the first place.

It’s the same all across the board. The cycling community is pretty tribal, and as befits an individual sport, most cyclists tend to be fiercely independent in their particular biking style and preferences. So even when everyone technically follows the law, the stink eyes cyclists give to everyone who differs from their preferred parameters can be something to behold. And how many stink eyes is that? Well, let’s look at some of the different types:

– The spandex-clad dudes with expensive sports bikes and a midlife crisis who hate everyone slower than them, which is everyone

– The laissez-faire people riding slow, one-gear bikes super erratically, swerving wherever the fuck they like and never letting on where they’ll turn next

– The men who can’t accept that some women have better bikes and/or pedal faster, and deliberately block their paths or attempt to overtake them regardless of what happens around them

– Drunks

– People who for some reason genuinely think laws don’t apply to them

Consciously or not, each and every one of them thinks that their brand of cycling is the right one. And whenever someone does something that differs from their narrow specifications of What’s Right, dirty looks that would make Ivan Drago take a step backwards fly through the air.

Of course, it doesn’t exactly help that every once in a while, every one of us earns those looks. It’s so fucking easy to make mistakes when you’re cycling. Know those times when you’re driving on a highway and there’s just miles and miles of open road in front of you? That chill cruise mode normally associated with driving can totally hit you when you’re cycling, too — and when it does, you’re not in a heavy, protective metal box. The monotone repetitiveness of pedaling and the sense of silently gliding over the ground can zone you out really quickly, right up until you notice that you’ve veered a little too close to the center of the road, or nearly collided with someone else, or stopped for a red light and somehow ended up at a 45-degree angle blocking pedestrians, bikes, and cars alike like a complete dipshit. It’s not something I’d call extremely common — it’s not like every cyclist out there is driving like a clown 24/7. But you see someone’s zoned-out bumblefuckery almost daily out there, and I’m not even going to pretend that I haven’t done my share of that shit as well. Hey, I just understood why drivers sometimes hate us.

In all fairness, that’s just my personal experience of bicyclists, and I’m a notoriously grumpy fucker. It’s entirely possible that to someone else, the cycling experience is way more of a “unicorns farting rainbows” thing than the Mad Max world I’ve described. Despite my tendency to give cycling a hard time, at the end of the day, I do enjoy it a lot. I enjoy it enough to write thousands of passionate words about it.

Besides, it sure as hell beats riding on a bus that someone has used as a toilet.

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

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Match Report 28/1/17

WASTCA One-Day Div 2

Applecross [6/161] def Fremantle Mosman Park [7/158]

We meet again, Applecross… on top of the ladder and still undefeated with a percentage of 2.56%. Think about that for minute… take everyone else’s total score, double it, and then add the second closest team’s percentage.

And we were welcoming them to our home ground, like having wolves at the door and saying, ‘Please, come right in… help yourselves to our women and children’.

Ray sent us a pre-game pep talk:

‘Just some lazy comparison stats: Players used: Pirates - 31, Applex - 18 Season runs: Pirates - 1398, Applex - 2026. 50’s: Pirates - 4, Applex - 10           100’s: Pirates - 2, Applex - 4 Ducks: Pirates - 11, Applex - 0  Season wickets: Pirates - 46, Applex - 79.’

Thank you, Ray. Inspirational.

It would be Richard Murphy’s 100th game, a significant milestone. Nav would also be there after his month long Indian Summer wedding, with Murph as his best man. Both gentlemen are sweet hearts, and obviously enjoying a bromance that is still not quite acceptable in Indian culture, and hence the sham wedding…

Shrugger was out, with more to contribute in his dance moves in the crowd at the Scorchers game. Fair call, they did win convincingly… And Cooky, stolen from us by Rory in 10s, had to go and play in the heat out in the Swan Valley. He also had Rory keeping off his bowling…

Sorry, Cooky. That’s what happens to tall poppies. And the not so tall ones…

Caddy Senior filled in at the last moment, another of the great old boys from the club, and father to our coach, Cadds Jnr. I usually blame the parent, but to be fair Anthony was raised at a time when smacking children was becoming unfashionable.

With potentially our strongest squad yet, we thought we might have been in with a sniff. Hell, even having a full eleven was something worth celebrating.

Nor did they have their opening bowlers, only their third change pie chuckers. Could we upset the top team? Would today be the day of the underdog?

Or would they go through us like a hot knife in butter? Like a dose of the salts? Or like a hijacked lorry through a German night market at Christmas…

Yes. Yes they would.

Ray won the toss and elected to bat in a 35 over game. At one stage he was considering putting them in, just for the thrill of the chase. I had to slap him to make him see sense. The way I saw it, we could get rolled for not much, they would make the runs in a matter of over’s and we could still watch BBL final.

‘Good thinking’, said Ray.

Quinny and Dave made a solid opening partnership of 48. Even their worst bowlers were hard to get away. The left armer angled it across you and the righty moved it away, swinging late and seaming.

Quin was the first to go on 22.  I went in to last 3 balls, playing all around it, and going for big fat duck. I can still hear the laughter ringing in my ears a trudged back, incredulous at the weakness of my mental fibre.

I’m not angry at myself, just very disappointed... Actually, I was very angry and disappointed. Can somebody recommend a good sports psychologist? ‘It all started with my mother…’. ‘Back to the nets, Dickhead. That’ll be $250’

Dave popped one up, gone.  And then Nav popped one up and we had lost 4 wickets for 6 runs to be 4 for 54 at drinks. All easy catches, like the ball had chosen to land on fielders, which in one case it literally did.

Alex Quin fell into reverie and began muttering his mantra of ‘Soft Wickets’.

Hard ball, soft wickets No fours, just pickets No cheers, just crickets Soft wickets, soft wickets…

Nothing eases the tension like softly whispered verse to accompany the familiar tune of a ‘Pirate Shuffle’, the merry little dance we all know so well.

Darrell went in next and ‘Old Man Caddy’ recounted to us the story of his wood duck nomination. The beauty of having the veterans around is they are a natural suppository of great wisdom, and as the currently reigning Wood Duck, I took keen interest in learning the lineage of my forebears...

Apparently Darrell was next to in to bat, but needed a poo, and was still on the dunny as three wickets fell! Going out without pads on pales in comparison.

Apologies for the scatological references, Quentin. I know you would prefer to keep them repressed deep inside where Daddy cannot find them.

Murph and Darrell steadied the ship and put on 39, Darrell made a quick 15 including a crunching six, and Murph hit a number of fours square of the wicket. Darrell was eventually caught and we bought up the 100, 6 down with a wide. Inglorious.

Continuing on the theme of hubris and reckoning, Clint was trapped LBW for 1 after talking up his average as justification for moving up the order.

Ray and Murph hung on.

Sterling was actually spinning the ball but Murph took to him. It takes wily old spinner to know one. Similarly Ray hit a 6, and even ran some twos before playing onto his stumps off Seen.

More out of resignation than triumph, Murph raised the bat on 50, casual as you like, and proceeded to be dropped in the last over to finish not out on 60, including 8 fours and a 6.

Cadds Senior rotated the strike to Murph running better than most men in the club half his age and finished on 7 not out.

Surprisingly, we made it to 7/158. Defendable, but not nearly enough…

Tea was still the best in the competition, thanks to Lynne and Doreen. I often wonder if the reason they come down week in week out, is not just to be a part of the community, but to flirt with a hot young buck like Wilko. It would be the highlight of my week if I were an 80-year-old girl.

Mixing it up, we opened the bowling with Corms and McGivern, prioritizing the guys who didn’t get a bat. Ray’s intention was good, and like the paving on the long and winding road to hell and it merely resulted in their figures being utterly destroyed.  Their opening batsmen piled on the runs, bringing up 50 in less than 8 overs.

I had wondered if taking the pace off the ball early would require the openers to time it better if they wanted to smoke it before they had their yes in. It didn’t.

Maybe if we had built a bit of pressure opening with Clint and Darrel we might have taken wickets earlier. Clint took a blinding caught and bowled that was brutal in its understatement.

I missed a run out chance off Darrell’s bowling, but them made good with a throw directly over the stumps to Quinny, as Campbell BBQ’d the new batsman.

Murph got his money’s worth in his game fee. After making 60 not out he was run ragged fielding on the leg side, like a veritable ball magnet.

I then dropped one hit straight to me sending Darrell into conniptions of expletives, but them caught him a few overs later in a squat between my legs, not trusting my hands.

I learn from my mistakes, just not very quickly. A medium pace learner, I think is the expression.

Kim arrived at the ground and Corms begged to be brought back onto bowl. I think in all of human history, the grandest achievement has been driven by men pursuing the attention of a beautiful woman, and this was no exception.

He pulled it back and took 3 wickets for 8 runs in his final three over’s, going for 34 in the previous three.  Even from the middle of the park I could see her cheeks blush and eyes dilate as she brushed back her hair in admiration of her champion, the fine specimen that he is.

Murph took two catches, one excellent grab diving forward to scoop it up before reaching the ground and we had them 6 down. Which is heartening. Maybe with more runs, and a bit of luck we could actually make a go of it.

Though, probably not.

I bowled three overs at the end, got my hands to one smoked back at me, saving four, but also a reminder that maybe I should catch them off my own bowling. They won on a wide,  which really symbolized the kind of game we were having. Unable to give up, unable to let go they humoured me with finishing the over.

The challenge for us now is to not finish in 4th position in the ladder. Otherwise we will meet Applecross and be decimated in the first semi.

Whereas, a second or third place would give us the opportunity to win the second semi final, to be decimated by Applecross in the grand final.

And that is what keeps our hopes alive…

[biofunmy]

They Love Trash – The New York Times

JOSHUA TREE, Calif. — Soph Nielsen was sewing garbage onto her black T-shirt (a chicken wing, a crushed Bud Light can, a plastic fork) and struggling to attach a snarl of crusty pad thai.

“This is to get people to see the trash,” she said, her fingers slick with grease. “We don’t want to be the invisible janitors.” With her distinctive appliqués, that was unlikely.

It was the last day of the Joshua Tree Music Festival, a family-friendly event of didgeridoo sound baths, yoga, crafts, electronica and other familiar fare held at a dusty desert campground for three days in October. Ms. Nielsen, a 25-year-old artist whose medium is trash, was one of 20-odd Trash Pirates working the event.

The Pirates are a loose collective of waste management specialists, to borrow a phrase from Tony Soprano, who make sure events are as sustainable as possible through recycling and composting. They also educate attendees about how to do both properly.

Garbage has long been the uncomfortable fallout of the festival world, and as these gatherings multiply like glow sticks at a Phish concert, stretching the season into a year-round party (hola, Costa Rica), its impact has roused young artists and activists like Ms. Nielsen.

Most Pirates start out as volunteers, helping with trash or performing other tasks so as to attend for free. Then they have their “trash moment,” as the Pirates put it, the epiphany that turns volunteer work into a career, and trash into a calling.

“Your first experience of the mass of it, whether it’s loading dumpsters onto a trailer or driving out to the event grounds when everyone is gone and it’s a sea of trash, is an existential crisis,” Ms. Nielsen said. “You are baptized into compost.”

“You’re either in or you’re out,” she added, echoing the rallying cry of a long-ago counterculture movement that involved a bus, “and it becomes a way of life.”

The events themselves — both community-minded and escapist — are morphing into trash camps: days-long immersions into the politics of waste, with lectures and workshops on developing your garbage-handling skills along with your yoga practice.

Some trash stats are in order. In 2017, according to an environmental impact report, Coachella, in Indio, Calif., was generating over 100 tons of trash each day. Many events are now committed to becoming zero-waste endeavors, or as close to it as possible. High “diversion” rates (the percentage of waste not sent to the landfill) are badges of honor. Last spring, the Trash Pirates brought the Joshua Tree Music Festival’s rate up to 77 percent.

In 2017, Coachella’s diversion rate was just 20 percent, apparently because attendees weren’t using the recycling bins. Veterans of Burning Man and other festivals learn acronyms like MOOP, for “Matter Out of Place,” an umbrella term for trash and anything else that doesn’t occur naturally on a site; cigarette butts, broken tents and human waste are some common examples.

Burning Man has a “Leave No Trace” ethos, but the messy camps of bad Burners are called out each year on the festival’s MOOP Map in the hope that public shaming will be a deterrent next time around.

‘Shepherds of the “Away’’’

While there are many waste organizations dedicated to mitigating the environmental impact of such gatherings, the Trash Pirates are distinguished by their zeal and their punk aplomb.

Take Moon Mandel, 24, a filmmaker and Trash Pirate who was managing the operations that weekend at Joshua Tree. Mx. Mandel is nonbinary, and with their bright orange jumpsuit emblazoned with patches stitched with trash graphics (the recycling whorl and other insignia) they looked like an indie Eagle Scout.

As Oscar the Grouch sang his gruff-voiced hymn “I Love Trash,” one of many trash-friendly songs on the Pirates’ playlist, Mx. Mandel said: “It’s very important for people to see the work we do and understand the human scope of it. We are trying to alter the cultural norms of a throwaway society. We teach them that there’s no ‘away.’ We are the shepherds of the ‘away’ and it’s being buried inside the earth forever.”

And so Mx. Mandel performed trash collections, dancing with colleagues as Oscar warbled under a festive tent with gaily painted bins, and sorting garbage (earning $5 a bag) for those campers too busy or negligent to do it themselves.

To attendees who had dutifully separated their food scraps and recyclables and were tipping them into the appropriate bins, Mx. Mandel called out a hearty, “Yarg!” their preferred Pirate cheer.

“Thank you for composting!” Mx. Mandel praised a young woman scraping scrambled eggs out of a frying pan, and then recited some recycling basics: “You can’t compost paper with too much printing on it, or recycle greasy paper. Single-use bags can be taken to supermarkets in California for recycling, so we are collecting them. Make sure everything is clean. You don’t need to rinse your soda or beer cans. But if your stuff is covered in yogurt, it’s not going to be recycled.”

Mx. Mandel has a policy about not working festivals where organizers are charging for water. “The decommodification of water is one of my core beliefs,” they said.

Mx. Mandel was particularly proud of their cigarette-butt program. For the last two years, they have been collecting butts (200,000 and counting, they said) at festivals and sending them to TerraCycle, a company that teams with manufacturers and retailers to recycle or upcycle all manner of products and materials, including action-figure toys, backpacks and toothbrushes. Cigarette butts are turned into plastic pallets; the tobacco is composted.

Sarah Renner, the operations and site manager for the Joshua Tree Music Festival, wrote in an email that the Trash Pirates are “the down and dirty, real as can be, heroes of the event world.”

The Pirates have handled her festival’s waste for the last four years, sweeping, handing out bags and painting barrels with children. “They don’t just pull trash bags and sort recycling,” she said. “They are on a mission to change the way people think while getting everything to where it needs to go.””

The work is brutal. Heat stroke, sunburn, cuts and bruises are common hazards, as is a dousing with trash juice: the pungent slurry that pours from a trash can and into your armpits when you’re hoisting it over your head.

Close-toed boots are encouraged, but don’t always protect. Mx. Mandel’s foot was sliced open, they said, this past February at a festival in Costa Rica by a severed iguana hand that pierced their boot, but most dangers are what you’d think: nails, screws, shards of glass.

Tools of the trade include MOOP sticks, which are long claws for grabbing trash without having to bend over. These are light and rather delicate, with a nice action, and are precise enough to pick up a grain of rice.

Hand sanitizer and liquid soap are requirements; one Pirate, Moose Martinez, had a Purell bottle clipped to the strap of his over-the-shoulder water bag. Work gloves and thin blue food service gloves are part of the uniform, but many of the Pirates were working in their bare hands.

“We call that raw-dogging,” said Luke Dunn, 33, a musician and preschool teacher, as a colleague with clean hands fed him a chocolate-chip cookie. “You try not to touch your face, you wash a lot.”

On the Pirates’ Facebook page, “Trash Pirates and Waste Naughts,” with over 4,000 followers, they share job tips (a recent post was for waste management at McMurdo Station in Antarctica); inspiration (“It’s Called Garbage Can, Not Garbage Cannot”); and education (news clips on California’s recycling woes and posts reviewing the best trash bags or instructions on how to make compostable confetti out of leaves with a hole puncher).

One long thread discussed cleaning up glitter, a particular scourge of Gay Pride parades.

‘The Lost Boys’

The Trash Pirates formed six years ago when two friends, Caleb Robertson, now 26, and Kirk Kunihiro, 29, then living in the San Francisco Bay Area, wanted to go to festivals for free.

While volunteering for the green teams, as they are called, of these gatherings, Mr. Robertson said, “We came to realize that there was a way to express our zero-waste passions within the event industry.”

They learned their craft at Green Mary, a two-decades-old company dedicated to making events sustainable that was founded by Mary Munat, an environmental activist and former Army reservist.

“They are fast, hard-working, green-hearted people,” she said of the Pirates. “I love their energy and greenness, and I am so glad my age-old eco-passions gave birth to so many little green pirates.”

The Trash Pirates was a nickname they gave each other early on, when festivals were more haphazard, and it stuck. In the beginning, Mr. Robertson, said “It was more seat-of-the-pants. Many of us were living out of our vehicles. That’s the thing: Trash can attract people who don’t feel like they have a place to go, giving people purpose in a space where they had none. Kind of like the Lost Boys. People are interested in the party, but it becomes empty if you don’t have a purpose.”

Next year, they hope to work upward of 30 events. “The work isn’t going to stop, I’m almost scared of it,” Mr. Robertson said, adding that he and many of his colleagues are looking to expand beyond the festivals and tackle community projects in Los Angeles, where he now lives, and beyond.

Mx. Mandel is devoted to filmmaking; Ms. Nielsen to art and activism. “But we are all still united by trash,” Mr. Robertson said. “We recognize that festivals are a stage and a platform to reach people, but we also know that it’s just a Band-Aid and the best thing we can do is to concentrate on government policies and community work.”

Mr. Kunihiro, who also lives in Los Angeles, started his own waste-consulting business, which includes a waste sampling service that analyzes the composition of waste streams — work that makes festival trash seem as clean and fresh, he said, as birthday cake.

He has led tours for fourth graders of recycling plants in the Bay Area; at Joshua Tree, his water bottle was a tiny blue toy recycling bin, a gift from his mother.

Another Pirate, Stephen Chun, talked about the awkward moment when he is asked what he does for a living. “A lot of people are like, ‘Huh, that’s nice. Good for you,” he said. “The feedback over time goes from being, ‘Oh, you’re the trash guy’ to, ‘Oh, you’re a hero.’ Now I say I’m a zero-waste events consultant.”

Ms. Munat said, “People see us going through the recycling and offer us their sandwiches. And we’re like, ‘No, it’s O.K., we’re getting paid.’”

Because trash is ascendant as a problem and a paradigm, it continues to grow as a métier. “In 1995, when I first starting teaching about waste, it was a boutique subject and not considered appropriate for academic study,” said Robin Nagle, a professor of anthropology and environmental studies at New York University who specializes joyfully in garbage.

She has been anthropologist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation for more than a decade; her book “Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks With the Sanitation Workers of New York City” was published in 2013. Professor Nagle is a founder of what’s known as discard studies, a new interdisciplinary field of research examining waste politically, culturally and economically.

“You can take any piece of trash as an object in the world and track it from its raw materials though its journey into the marketplace as a commodity,” she said. “At any of those points it will connect not just to the proliferation of garbage as a form of pollution but a host of any other environmental crises including the big megillah that is climate change.”

Of the Trash Pirates she said, “They are pushing boundaries in wonderful ways. I would be curious to see what they’re doing in 20 years. Do they bounce from this ebullient, youthful thing to something more settled? And will the planet be even closer to the brink of destruction?”

We shall see, but in the meantime, as is their practice, the Pirates swept the Joshua Tree Music Festival campgrounds clean by forming a MOOP line, as it’s known, with each Pirate three to four feet apart and armed with a MOOP stick and a bucket, and moving from the perimeter to the center.

Mx. Mandel said, “Like one amoeba we slowly devour the MOOP.”

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I Own A Bike Instead Of A Car: 5 Reasons Everyone Hates Me

I’m one of those dipshits who never got around to getting a driver’s license. As someone who hates being the designated driver, I am truly blessed by this. However, it also means that I have to rely on public transport for most of my getting-around needs. In recent times, I’ve gotten sick of pee-smelling subway cars and delightfully cramped buses, so I’ve attempted to cheat code my way out of all of that jazz by riding a bicycle to most everywhere. And man, that has revealed a whole new, previously hidden world to me.

A whole new, hidden, terrifying world.

5

You’ll Always Reek Of Ass

Just so we’re clear, I’m not one of those spandex missiles you see Lance Armstrong-ing their way through the city at breakneck speeds. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not an exercise kind of person at all. My workout is of the “bare minimum you need to do to keep resembling a human being” variety, and is exclusively motivated by an innate need to be able to execute a perfect dropkick at anyone or anything I feel has slighted me. At best, I’m the Super Mario of bicyclists: medium speed, medium stats, a little too chubby to pass for an athlete, and I would secretly like to swap my bike for a go-kart.

Still, bicycling is a physical activity, even for someone like me, who uses it exclusively for transportation purposes and prefers to ride at un-exhausting speeds. No matter how slowly you ride, though, you’ll strain yourself way beyond most other forms of transportation. Which means sweat. Which means swamp ass. Which obviously shouldn’t be a problem. Obviously you take a shower and/or change your clothes after you ride to, say, work. Obviously. You wouldn’t have it any other way.

For me, that mentality lasted for about a week.

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Why Hurricane Irma Has Felt Different From Most Hurricanes

I’m sure that there are people who ride a bicycle everywhere and each time dutifully spend 15 minutes showering and changing clothes at their destination, but I’ve never actually met one of these folks, and I sure as shit am not one myself. It’s not that you don’t want to keep clean; it’s just that when you spend the day zipping around on a self-powered vehicle, you’d need three changes of clothing even without the whole showering thing. No one has time for that shit, so it’s easier to just do your best to clean yourself up a bit and resign yourself to the faint waft of eau d’taint following you wherever you go. So anything under five miles tends to be “Eh, whatever,” while longer rides might warrant a quick change of underwear and a baby wipe treatment to the armpits (which technically makes my hygiene habits the same as Brad Pitt’s … ladies).

Still, this is not necessarily a life-ruining thing. Hell, people might not even notice your secret grossness. But it’s not like you can ask a friend for an opinion, because …

4

Cycling Can Turn You Into A Social Pariah

One of the things I was most surprised about is that social interaction and cycling don’t go too well together, regardless of how well you maintain your stench.

In tons and tons of social situations, you’ll find yourself having to explain precisely WHY you use a bike right off the bat, and it can become a big thing. Sure, your boss probably values that you try to keep in shape, but when it comes to pretty much anything else, you’re screwed. Dating? Good luck, you now rely on the other person to haul you both around, which in turn can easily make them think of you as someone who’s not financially responsible enough to own a car. Heading for a night out with your friends? They’ll take their car, or an Uber, or public transport. You’ll be the fucker who turns up on a bike and has to change clothes — or worse, won’t change them, so that everyone can have a round of beers and another round of “What’s that smell? Is that cheese? Did Pauli bring cheese?”

Then you have to deal with the fact that you have a bicycle with you … all night. So now your friends have to deal with you. “No, guys, I know we agreed to meet with the rest of the group a few blocks from here, but I just found the perfect spot to park my bike, and can’t leave it behind, and don’t feel like unpacking it from the 12,587 chains and locks I need to make sure it doesn’t get stolen.” It’ll get old after a while, and even if you don’t mean to make a huge deal about it, it tends to become one, because from the group’s point of view, you’re now the shithead who insisted on bringing a totally unnecessary and hindering large object with you. As a social faux pas, it’s like heading out for a beer with your best friend and bringing Alex Jones as a surprise avec.

So you become Bicycle Guy within your circle of friends. “We’re heading out for a drink, should I call Bicycle Guy?” “Nah, fuck him. He’ll just haul that damn bike with him all night, whining about how he can’t leave it out of his sight.” Your range of operations is also waaaay shorter than it would be for someone with a car — after a certain geographical distance, you’re going to be thinking long and hard on whether or not the strain to get there is worth it. And then there’s the fact that the carrying load of a bicycle is you and a backpack. Buy a new piece of furniture, and you’re shit out of luck unless you can bug some friend with a car to help you. Basically, you’re extra baggage to all of your acquaintances — from your point of view, everyone is that one friend with a pickup truck who people are always asking for a favor. From their point of view, you’re that fucker who keeps asking.

3

Maintenance Is Bullshit In Ways You Wouldn’t Believe

Because you don’t have to bother with gas or parking, cycling can seem like a pretty simple mode of transportation: Just hop on and pedal until you’re where you need to be. I know that’s what I thought when I first started. However, the grim reality is that you’ll be spending way more time on hands-on maintenance than with a car. 50 percent of bike ownership is shouting “What the hell is wrong with you?” at it.

For a relatively uncomplicated mechanical device, there are so, so, so many ways a bicycle can break down — which it absolutely will at the slightest provocation, unless you keep tabs on it. You have to constantly check that the nuts and bolts are tightened. Brake pads and lines need replacing. The tires will pop if you give them a sharp look, and magically keep leaking tiny amounts of air so that you have to check ’em all the time. The more often you take off the wheel and chain in order to replace tires, the more wear and tear you get on the stuff that holds it all together, so it becomes super easy to strip the bolts or make it to where they simply won’t stay tightened. Almost all bikes eventually get loose handlebars. The chain needs to be kept oiled and clean. Everything that can rust will rust super easily, so rain will wreck your shit. And that’s just the beginning. Here’s a handy list of 101 fucking things you’ll need to keep in mind unless you want to turn your bicycle into an expensive faceplant machine.

Sure, you could just take the bike to the shop every time something breaks, but lets face it, you won’t. That shit will set you back hundreds and hundreds of dollars over time just to keep the thing in working condition. You have to know how to fix all that shit, and how to recognize the various irregularities in the riding experience and minuscule noises that indicate potential problems. It’s a pain in the ass to the point where it’s easy to just end up ignoring the issues and ride on the solid principle of “Man, I really hope nothing breaks today. Better look into that strange noise tomorrow.”

This is obviously not the best move, as I once found out when one of the pedals (which had been acting a little funny for a week or two) snapped straight off mid-kick. In related news, completely and unexpectedly losing your balance while riding is a strange feeling that apparently leads into a kickass somersaults and a keen newfound interest in bicycle maintenance. In even more related news, turns out helmets are not just for decoration.

Not that maintaining your bike helps jack shit if you don’t know what you’re doing. I once accidentally tightened a nut holding the back wheel too much, so it chose to snap when I was riding down a particularly steep alley. This caused the wheel to partially jump off its fork, which also fucked up the brakes, seeing as they rely on the wheels to be where they’re supposed to. With no way to brake and the wheel stuck jumping up and down in the fork in a way that effectively turned the bike into a rodeo horse, I did the only thing I could do: I let out a passable impression of the Wilhelm Scream and rammed my feet against the asphalt, trying to ignore the fact that this also meant that my dick was slamming with equal force against the top tube. That was the longest five seconds of my life. I managed to stop roughly 15 feet before a wall. I still have the pair of Converses with the soles burned through somewhere in my attic.

2

Cyclists Are Despised By Everyone Else On The Road

The neighborhood I live in has a Facebook group, because of course it fucking does. I joined because area news and various local grievances are generally great for entertainment purposes, but I immediately found out that roughly 70 percent of all conversations in the group revolve around two subjects: the acceptable and unacceptable places where a dog can poop (nowhere and everywhere, respectively), and the way bicyclists are unrepentant assholes who endanger everyone’s lives.

This is not an isolated thing. Bikes versus cars is a famously bloody flame war, both online and in real life, and once you bring pedestrians in the mix, the shit soup is good and stirred. If you’re invested in the subject, you know the arguments: “Bicyclists are law-breaking dicks who zoom dangerously around in traffic.” “Cities are designed for cars.” “Cyclists are weenies who are trying to save the environment, or hipsters, or annoying fitness nuts.” And that shit bleeds way into real life. There are drivers who more or less deliberately hit cyclists and lose their complete and utter shit when dealing with them. There are cyclists who fatally run into pedestrians and call it “unavoidable.” I was kind of hoping I could find stories about pedestrians who eat cars or something to make this a rock-paper-scissors analogy, but it turns out pedestrians are just generally fucked.

Of course, this entire situation is because of a very specific group of people: assholes. Every mode of transport has its share, and for cyclists, it’s the jerkfaces who zip around in the traffic with nothing but an “I could squeeze through here” mindset, and often at way too high speeds. No one notices the people who ride their bikes carefully and follow the rules. It’s the assholes and their various accidents and close calls who hog the publicity, which leads to many drivers perceiving cyclists as hostile yet fragile meat missiles capable of nothing but erratic, borderline-illegal turns and twists. For pedestrians, it’s the same, but you’re a silent, fast meat missile riding on 30 pounds of cold murder steel.

But hey, let the rest of the world hate you. At least you still have your fellow bicyclists, who totally understand your thing and like you. You can always hang out with them, right? R-right?

1

Bicyclists Hate Each Other, Too

Ha! Plot twist!

Individual groups of cyclists may be tight, but even casual bike-riding will reveal that cyclists as a whole are an insanely fragmented demographic, and most of the splinter groups are wary of each other. When you buy a motorcycle, it’s like joining a club, and you happily wave your hand at passing bikers. When you buy a bike, you get passive-aggressive “11 types of cyclists we all know” lists from Cycling Weekly which make no secret about the fact that all 11 types are kind of dipshits. That article is exclusively about the spandex-clad hardcore riders, by the way — the very people who read fucking Cycling Weekly in the first place.

It’s the same all across the board. The cycling community is pretty tribal, and as befits an individual sport, most cyclists tend to be fiercely independent in their particular biking style and preferences. So even when everyone technically follows the law, the stink eyes cyclists give to everyone who differs from their preferred parameters can be something to behold. And how many stink eyes is that? Well, let’s look at some of the different types:

– The spandex-clad dudes with expensive sports bikes and a midlife crisis who hate everyone slower than them, which is everyone

– The laissez-faire people riding slow, one-gear bikes super erratically, swerving wherever the fuck they like and never letting on where they’ll turn next

– The men who can’t accept that some women have better bikes and/or pedal faster, and deliberately block their paths or attempt to overtake them regardless of what happens around them

– Drunks

– People who for some reason genuinely think laws don’t apply to them

Consciously or not, each and every one of them thinks that their brand of cycling is the right one. And whenever someone does something that differs from their narrow specifications of What’s Right, dirty looks that would make Ivan Drago take a step backwards fly through the air.

Of course, it doesn’t exactly help that every once in a while, every one of us earns those looks. It’s so fucking easy to make mistakes when you’re cycling. Know those times when you’re driving on a highway and there’s just miles and miles of open road in front of you? That chill cruise mode normally associated with driving can totally hit you when you’re cycling, too — and when it does, you’re not in a heavy, protective metal box. The monotone repetitiveness of pedaling and the sense of silently gliding over the ground can zone you out really quickly, right up until you notice that you’ve veered a little too close to the center of the road, or nearly collided with someone else, or stopped for a red light and somehow ended up at a 45-degree angle blocking pedestrians, bikes, and cars alike like a complete dipshit. It’s not something I’d call extremely common — it’s not like every cyclist out there is driving like a clown 24/7. But you see someone’s zoned-out bumblefuckery almost daily out there, and I’m not even going to pretend that I haven’t done my share of that shit as well. Hey, I just understood why drivers sometimes hate us.

In all fairness, that’s just my personal experience of bicyclists, and I’m a notoriously grumpy fucker. It’s entirely possible that to someone else, the cycling experience is way more of a “unicorns farting rainbows” thing than the Mad Max world I’ve described. Despite my tendency to give cycling a hard time, at the end of the day, I do enjoy it a lot. I enjoy it enough to write thousands of passionate words about it.

Besides, it sure as hell beats riding on a bus that someone has used as a toilet.

Pauli Poisuo is a Cracked columnist and freelance editor. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.

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