he said 'i think i work out just as like, an excuse to drink protein, you know?'

In November 2011, Bethesda Game Studios released Skyrim, a gigantic, multi-console fantasy role playing game set in Bethesda's larger Elder Scrolls universe. Also in November 2011, I was just starting my graduate program at the University of Washington. I watched the footage on YouTube and told myself that after grad school, after I was done studying literary nonfiction and contextualizing and living an examined life, I would play the hell out of this game.

(jesus) [said]

i. a penis is not a victory dance.

x. friday is for wine, camels, and cummings.

ix. delilah penetrated samson first.

vii. paris is burning, fabulous.

iii. flesh

As Randy Johnson awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a mutant killing machine.

Ellis was truly surprised by

People spend their whole lives struggling to get what they think they want, and even if they get it, they find that it’s either not what they wanted, or it comes with so many unwanted

You Think You Can Stop Me??

You can’t stop me. 

So they don’t let me bring my cooler no more, big deal.  I’ll go to my truck.  Cold beers in my truck, my personal space.  Right there in the

rich

in maybe middle school i started telling my teachers, on the first day of class, that i’d prefer to be called rich. my friends started calling me rich too, because i told them to. i think

You drink all the beers I bought
And push towards me an arm full of bottles
You say, “I want to be alone
With my dreams forever.”

I leave you to be with my dreams
They are all of you

I'm giving up cold turkey for lent.

* * *

The shuffling of their feet wakes you ask they sneak into your stable at night. These are the biker boys, the popular boys in

Frasier Crane never gets what he wants because Frasier Crane is a horrible person.

Amanda is in her first year of a new city, Chicago, binging on television on the internet, and suspects

AL EAST

1. Tampa Bay Rays

WHY: Erik Bedard, who was the Pirates’ Opening Day starter in 2012, was forced to fight for the fifth spot in the Rays’ rotation, which is a sign of a

Uncle Max picked me up for tryouts. I must have been fidgety. I changed the radio station a half dozen times before turning it off.

“The Beach Boys shouldn’t call themselves boys,” I said.

We parked on Michigan Avenue like we always would, walking hand-in-hand through Corktown, the oldest neighborhood in Detroit. We bought peanuts in brown paper bags from vendors on the street. They

On these frigid afternoons between the Ides of March and Opening Day, when the final roster spots are being claimed, it’s still possible to envision that November parade down Broad St. The Phillies

Like every catch before or since, yours is a matter of geometry
and probability. To say this is to admit that I believe in miracles.

Pro-wrestling is this: the work of death and resurrection.

used to bring my glove
no fan would be without one
allure of the foul
 
I used to believe 
some men were superior
they wore hats and gloves
 
they had statistics
posters adorned

Edwards, wild, couldn't get out of the first. He put the first three guys on and then walked one in, gave up a double, followed by a hard single. Boom-boom-boom. Nothing was working. His curve had

Jim Ruland talks with J. Ryan Stradal about his new collaborative book Giving The Finger, the memoirs of Bering Sea fisherman & Deadliest Catch star Scott Campbell Jr., who goes by