Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
So if “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is be believed, you can fiddle duel the devil for your soul. My question is, does it only work with fiddles, or any contest? Saxophone duel? Guitar shred-off? Can you challenge the devil to a rap battle when he comes for you?
Even though I play piano I want to see someone fight for their soul with the tuba.
The Devil went back to Georgia and his thoughts were dark and cold That Johnny kid had screwed him and he still needed a soul. When he came across this young man blowin’ on a tuba and playin’ hits And the devil took one look and said “You know what? Fuck this shit.”
“Kid, I know you won’t believe this, but I play the tuba too “And if you wanna wager, well I’ve got a deal for you “If I’m the better tubist, then I get to take your soul “If you’re the best, you get this horn here, made from solid gold.”
The boy replied, “My name is Hans, and though it may be wrong, “Your bet’s pretty intriguing, so I guess I’ll play along”
Hans, clean out your spit valves, and get ready for a show, Two tubas feudin’ face to face; pick up your horn and blow. ‘Cause if you win, you get a brand new tuba made of gold, And if you lose the Devil gets your soul!
(Oompah music intensifies)
The Devil opened up his case and said, “I’ll start, I guess.” And fire puffed out from the bell as on the valves he pressed He raised the mouthpiece to his lips, it made a wicked BLART And a band of lederhosen demons joined in with him to start
(Roll Out the Barrel plays with extended tuba solo)
Hans looked the Devil in the eye, once he finished his piece, Said “That’s okay, old man, but just you get a load of this!”
The Devil bowed his head, because he knew he can’t compete. He dragged that heavy tuba down; it crashed by Hans’s feet. He turned away from Hans and as he retreated he said, “Forget this crap. I’m gonna try telemarketing instead.”
(Tuba outro)
@hamstergal you are amazing and owe me 1 clean monitor.
:(((
Fiddles are historically associated with the devil not through any Christian imagery, but because older European folk tradition held that several uber powerful water demons, known as nock, nikyr, necks, etc, were insanely good fiddle players.
In Norway, for example, the violin known as the Hardanger fiddle was played initially by the creepy otherwordly beings, like the hulderfolk, the trolls, as well as the nock. There are equivalents in other European cultures.
These beings were known as preternaturally skilled fiddle players, the nocks above all others. So some people would make a deal to learn the fiddle from the nock, or have their children trained. The only problem being nocks usually needed life or blood sacrifices to learn their skills.
So as Christianity was introduced, the water demon nock was conflated with the devil. Because other stories of nykyrs, nocks, etc were generally sacrificing a human to appease treacherous tides, which was the pinnacle of terror.
The devil knows the fiddle, because the ancient tradition is that if you can win your freedom from the nocks, they will honor this pact.
this post is the perfect mix of creativity, historical facts, and folklore/mythology, and above all shitposting.
With all the revitalized star wars hype, I just realized I’ve never shared this story on my blog:
When I was a tiny lil 8th grader, I was taking a Shakespeare elective with fourteen or so boys. 8th grade me got along with approximately zero of them, and they all hated each other, so it was a cesspool of uncontrollable infighting. The entire class got detention after one of those group-bonding activities where you have to rank items in terms of importance if your plane crashes in the desert, in which the entire class unanimously selected the gun with a single shot so we could play russian roulette, which was the first thing we agreed on all year.
The catch was, this class had to put on a sizeable performance (at least 20m) in the arts showcase at the end of the year. Our teacher kept insisting we do some skit about love in shakespeare, which all of us vehemently rejected because a) i was the only girl, b) romance is boring, c) everyone really just wanted to fuck around and not do work, and d) lest anybody forgot, we all really fucking loathed each other.
Someone had the great idea to suggest rewriting Star Wars in Shakespearean, which amused the teacher. At this point, anything other than Shakespeare’s Greatest Romantic Hits was appealing, and the whole class came together for the second time to advocate for the idea.
The teacher never officially confirmed that this was okay, but that didn’t matter, because shortly after the idea’s proposal the teacher got hit by a car and was on leave for the rest of the semester. And the substitute just took it for granted that Ye Olde Star Wars Episode the Fourth was already 100% cleared, so we went ahead with that, pretty much just shitting the script out of our asses and adding thous and thees to iconic lines.
And that’s how I got to douse my entire middle school in glitter from the assembly hall balcony as a hologram, screaming “Help me, Obi-Wan-Kenobi, thou art mine only hope!” while our teacher watched on in a sling and in horror as everybody took out the semester’s worth of rage on each other by smacking each other with plastic lightsabers and nerf pistols (which were definitely not allowed).
Incredibly, only one stormtrooper was visibly injured, and it wasn’t even the result of lightsaber zeal. It was during the “capture Leia” scene, where he was (obliviously) standing on one of my hair buns while at the same time yelling at me to stand up. But, as you all know, when somebody is standing on your hair, you remain on the floor. Still completely fucking oblivious, he solved this problem by opting to drag me across the entire stage floor while I screamed at him and attempted (successfully) to kick him in the face.
i work as a barista & people tell me all the time that The Drinks Got Gender. Thats A Lady Coffee, people try to say
its fucking bean water
can’t believe i can’t just reply to this but: maybe they’re actually telling you that this coffee has an important status. Lady Coffee
oh shit i was in the presence of bean water royalty oh fuck i must have looked like such a rube. such a fool.
what the fuck does this post mean ive been trying to decipher its hieroglyphic encrypted message but i cant
“From a deconstructionist stand point, I have to disagree with a large portion of the customers that I, a humble barista tend to each day. The assertion that certain coffee drinks are more suitable for one gender or another is folly. For as we know: 1. gender is a social construct, & 2. coffee of any type is simply hot water strained through roasted beans, & has no greater affect on either culturally assigned sex.”
“What ho, kind friend! Is it not unfortunate that I cannot simply reply to this post, & most reblog it? What a farce, this blue website! Ah, but I digress: what if perhaps your customers were not asserting not the suitability of the drink for a given gender, but rather indicating some matter of status? Perhaps the coffee is possessing of a high rank in society. This is of course my purely grammatical viewpoint on the subject.”
“Oh, damnation! This does in fact seem much more likely than my own ludicrous assumptions, & I was no doubt in the presence of roasted bean royalty! Some emissary from foreign soil! Curses! What a country bumpkin I’ve made myself out to be!!”
When you have to make your own food, and you’ve been watching too much food network lately
What you have before you are deconstructed, rustic chicken breast fritters coated lightly in breadcrumbs and toasted until crisp and golden- the sauce is a tomato, worcestershire, and vinegar reduction, with the vinegar for some brightness, and some brown sugar for sweetness to offset the umami of the chicken
I am having such a wonderful day on the tubes I can’t not share this story.
Let me build the scene:
Central Line between Oxford Circus and Chancery Lane, possibly St Pauls.
To my right is sat a lady, 25-30, wearing a revealing dress.
To my left is an old lady, almost dead is how old she is.
Standing in front of us is a man, 50’s, suit and tie, eyeing revealing dress.
Suit leans over to the revealing dress lady and says “Have some self respect when you dress yourself”
Revealing dress lady blushes to the colour of her almost not there dress.
Old soon to be dead lady is having none of this and in a south london accent shouts out “She can wear or not wear whatever the fuck she likes, even if she was naked with a sign pointing to her fanny” (she said fanny on the central line by St Pauls) “and the sign pointed to her fanny which said …PARTY CITY ALL INVITED…then that would still be none of your bloody business now fuck off back to your bored wife!”
Red dress then hugs the walking dead and old suit walks off.
That old lady will be my hero for the rest of her life, even if the rest of her life is like only another week. She was so old.
(Slightly edited to add final two lines that got dropped out somehow when I pasted this in….)
