tricksters and villains apply within

I've loved poetry since I was a kid. My family had some old collection of children's poems and songs, some of which were common and most of which weren't. I got a collection of "Best Loved Poetry" from my grandparents pretty young from their much larger collection of classic books with matching bindings. At every point in my life there's been at least one book of poems on my bookshelves, usually more than one. Love of poetry also led me into a love of quotations and I used to build notebooks full of quotes based on songs and stories and poems. Eventually I started writing my own poetry, like any teenager full of emotion they're inept at showing outwardly. I still have most of it, though it is admittedly horrible and full of conservative Christian beliefs and symbology because that's the world I grew up in. It's funny, I didn't believe the godly stuff I added to my poems but the more people reading my poems, the more I added because I thought ...

I think you have to have been living under a rock not to know what the NPR Music Tiny Desk Concerts art. So you don't need me to explain how good they can be to find new music or to see good indie musicians do what they do in an intimate setting. And the setlist isn't tight or too defined, the musicians can talk or riff or whatever makes them feel the music or connected to the small audience in the office at the time. I'm not an NPR fan and I don't watch every new Tiny Desk video when it goes up, but every now and again something will catch my eye. Last year's winner of the Tiny Desk Contest was a band called Tank and the Bangas. The video went up pretty much a year ago yesterday and it's 20+ minutes of good fun. Their music is hip hop soul with a big voice and really hefty lyrics. I fell in love pretty much immediately, listened to all the songs I could find and then sent the video out to all of my friends. They were in town for a Tedx youth conference rece...

From my time putting together things for a Dragon Age RP board, I've built up quite a collection of Pinterest boards for both characters and ships. Since starting though, my collection has expanded quite a bit to literature, podcasts and other media I enjoy. These days, I'm pretty sure you can tell exactly how much I'm into a thing by what boards I've created. My boards are themed in a way, characters assigned cards from both major and minor arcana from the tarot, as well as the lenormand cards. (As a note, I started doing this long before the Major Arcana for Critical Role S1 was ever announced so my cards don't match the characters, and I refuse to adjust them to match.) I tend to pick and choose characters that I like best, I've never created a full spectrum of boards for all the characters in a thing. I never put together a full list of boards for Critical Role S1 characters. And yet, Critical Role S2 totally made me want a board for each one of the ch...

I'm very much not the demographic for Dodie Clark's YouTube career, or even probably her music. But I find her honest and charming and her music utterly delightful. I appreciate her communication about her struggles with mental illness and her ability to put them on camera. I love the lyrics to her songs because they feel like they come from a real place and were I a younger adult, I'd likely find them highly applicable to my own feelings. Instead of sort of wistfully nostalgic. Actually I find myself somewhere between the two on most days and dodie's sweet, soft voice is a good remedy for when you find yourself more wistfully nostalgic than tragically and seemingly unceasingly young. (For me, anyway.)

If you need something to watch for a few hours, do yourself a favor and watched Netflix new show, Nailed It. I'm not a huge fan of baking or cooking shows, but there really needs to be more than six episodes of Nailed It. Or at least there's a promise for a second season. Nailed It is a baking show for home bakers who... aren't really very good, or experienced. There are three challengers in each show, and two challenges. The first challenge, Baker's Choice, gives the baker's a chance to pick from one of three similarly decorated treats to try and recreate. They're given between 45-50 minutes to attempt the recreation and then judged on both sight and taste. The winner of Baker's Choice gets a prize (a stand mixer in several episodes) and the chance to wear a bright gold chef's hat for the second round signifying that they're the one to beat. In the second round, they start from scratch and all three are tasked with recreating an amazing cake ...

I'd planned to take my little sister out to see Love, Simon tonight but it was nearly a sold out show, which rarely happens at our theater. So, rather than wait for a later show, we went to see Tomb Raider instead. I wasn't sure what to expect, I've seem some pretty cynical reviews and some really shitty ones from manbabies that care more about the size of Lara's chest than anything else in the movie. Taking everything I've heard with a huge grain of salt, I thought we'd check it out. I was never a fan of the early Tomb Raider games, they felt unnecessarily difficult and way too focused on Lara's appearance (they were). In recent years with the reboot of the video game series, I decided to check them out again. And I fell in love with Lara, the story, the game play. They're fantastic games. A little bit open-world, a little bit puzzle-platformer, a little rpg. They've got good story, good puzzles and a great protagonist. I've never really gotte...