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CASCADE CASCADE •

I Hate Time Stop

Time Stop is a six mana instant from Kamigawa block that ends whatever turn is happening, blanking all possible game effects that are happening at that moment. What at first glance looks like a moderately powerful defensive tool for blue decks turns out to be much stronger when used on the offensive–for example, in a four player environment on another player’s turn. When used in a 1v1 at the beginning of another player’s turn, it’s a spell that gives the caster an ext...
The Daily Drunk •

A Scene From Clerks MMMMMDCCXXIX

Dante and Randall are at the video store. They’ve always been at the video store, after all.

Except, right now they’re in the Quik Stop. Dante is restocking the shelves, even if the bones of his fingers keep getting stuck between the railings. Sometimes one runs away and hides behind the cans. They’ve been doing that more since the rest of their organs, skin, and muscle tissue withered away.

Except, they don’t use the names Dante and Randall anymore. You can still tell who’swho by the shag...
Waffle Fried •

Tell Me I’m Being Punk’d - Waffle Fried

It’s been an hour since you went in for surgery that could save your life, and they’re telling me it’s too early to worry. It’s been two hours since your went in for surgery that could save you, and the soft music they’re pumping in is really starting to get on my nerves. It’s been three hours since you went in for surgery that could save, and I’m starting to get hungry, since we skipped breakfast to come in early, but that starts to make me feel guilty. It’s been four hours since you went in fo...
Flash Boulevard •

BEN SHAHON: Buy Me Some Peanuts

Sometimes there is nothing but rage in your gut, and you don’t know what to do but hit something. So, you get in your old brown pickup truck, the kind that gets three miles to the gallon, and drive way out to the batting cage on the edge of town. You can’t swing a bat as well as you used to, but there’s still some force when you manage to put your hips into it. You line up at the fifty mile per hour cage, right behind all the old, fat slow-pitch guys that want just to show off to one another tha
Roi Faineant Press •

"My Ninth Birthday"

I remember my ninth birthday like it was yesterday, because I woke up that morning, and I started to wonder when my mom and dad would come in with a huge breakfast in tow, the kind of breakfast that could easily feed two or three of my brothers and sisters, but for some reason they expected me to eat all by myself that morning, even if I’d rather stuck to a cup of juice and eat more cake later when it’s time, and as soon as the sleep started to drain from my eyes I noticed the corner of my door
The Daily Drunk •

Escape From Springfield, Season 6: Bart of Darkness

There’re a lot of lessons you need to learn as a young writer, and one of the most important ones I ever learned came from someone I could scarcely call a mentor. I was in one of her larger classes, the kind where no reasonable instructor would be able to closely know all the students, but we’d spoken a few times, short and infrequent conversations compared to the numerous other people in the same department who poured massively more time into me, but still something. We were at some kind of lun
BULLSHIT LIT •

Adam and Dania

Adam and Dania Beach sits roughly nine miles off Interstate 5, halfway between Olympia and Seattle, on the other side of the train tracks, and just south of a beachfront neighborhood. The girl climbs out of the car on a literal Memory Lane, parked unceremoniously in front of a house that is not hers, and sneaks through someone’s backyard until her shoes hit the sand. No one is with her, except the full moon looking down on her.

Treading north toward more homes, there sits a stocky white buildin
The Daily Drunk •

Escape From Springfield, Season 5: Treehouse of Horror IV

Lately I’ve been engaging in a lot of conversations about genre and genre studies with students in my writing classes. I’ve been asking them questions like “What makes a genre a genre?” and “What makes this genre different from other genres?” And, for the most part, The Simpsons can neatly be put in the venerated category of animated sitcom. But every year, once per season, the show changes somewhat. That’s right; today we’re talking about Treehouse of Horror.


Treehouse of Horror, a series wi...
The Daily Drunk •

Escape From Springfield, Season 4: A Streetcar Named Marge

The Simpsons is a very smart show. Perhaps, one of the smartest in the pantheon of ’90s TV.

I wouldn’t have agreed with the statement with prior to watching the series. Generally the pop culture impression of The Simpsons was—from my perspective—boorish, sophomoric, and generally built to the lowest common denominator. There had always been rumors of prior greatness (and by now in Season 4, we’re chiefly in “Golden Age Simpsons” territory), but my personal impression of the show was poor to say
The Daily Drunk •

Escape From Springfield, Season 3: Colonel Homer

Anton Chekov, 19th Century playwright and author, is widely considered the father of modernist writing. I bring him up in this look at Season 3 of The Simpsons because his work as a critic informs why The Simpsons’ plots are some of the most effective in modernist sitcoms, animated or otherwise—the buildup and release of tension.

Despite his numerous short stories and plays of esteemed quality, Chekov is best remembered for his nominal literary principle: Chekov’s Gun. Simply stated, the princi
The Daily Drunk •

Escape From Springfield, Season 2: Itchy and Scratchy and Marge

Last time on Escape From Springfield, we looked at the fraught parent/child relationships The Simpsons employs, and how the stories often arise from the subversion of “father knows best.” However, one topic I didn’t speak as much about was the gender dynamics of the show’s first season, and whose stories were being told. Today, as in Season 2, we rectify that.

Despite being a subversion of family sitcoms in some ways, with its approach, the show is often remarkably traditional. Within each epis
The Daily Drunk •

Escape from Springfield, Season 1: I Married Bigfoot

When writing comedy, you can start anywhere, but a good place is your protagonist. And throughout the first season of The Simpsons, two commonly emerge—Bart and Homer. Common writing wisdom says a protagonist should be both likable and relatable, but part of what makes each Simpson so special from the outset is how none are both (save for maybe Marge). Lisa is a brainiac, Bart is a brat, Homer oscillates between loving and wrathful, and Maggie doesn’t even speak.

The Simpsons, a riff on the mol
Neuro Logical •

Eddie Would Go - Ben Shahon

The tiger eats the bird slowly, pulling the wings from their sockets with its fangs, not worrying at all about the blood spraying its fur. I watch as the most unholy rainbow unfolds before me: the blood, the fur, the feathers, the grass, the sky, the entrails. The tiger doesn’t look particularly engaged by its own violence. Instead, it looks like it just opened a bag of chips, and it accordingly lies back down as soon as it’s had its fill. The tiger lays there a moment, until it gets a little th
SIAMB #8 •

The Magnificence of a Time Not Yet Ready to End

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FRIENDS IN REAL LIFE

I still remember that Monday I stole Janelle’s new running shoes.

Back in high school, I’d seen her go into her gym locker more times than I could count I knew her combination better than my own. What I didn’t know was exactly what it was about those sneakers. Was it the electric blue of their laces? Or was it the smell of a sweat from dozens of practices breathing through the fabric exterior? She and I had been friends. She had trusted me not to touch her equipment. But I knew that to be as fa
Taco Bell Quarterly •

How to Have a Supremely Good Time

Loosen up. Live in the moment. Feel the rhythm of the music. Talk to someone. Be charming. Stop talking about the paleolithic era. Ask people about themselves. Have something to drink. Get on the dance floor. Try not to think about the inevitable heat death of the universe. Eat some seven-layer-dip. Make out with someone. Let someone tap you on the shoulder. Spin around at a totally normal speed. Slur something. Point finger guns. Refuse to throw the first punch. Throw the last one. Be hoisted u
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