#geoff simeon

[paranoid-fighter]

Drabble: An Unconventional Proposal

Just a drabble that came to mind after listening to Japan by Omnimotion, starring my favorite boys. This probably won’t be how their actual proposal goes, whenever it happens, but... this was too cute to pass up. 

Also, this is literally a thirty minute drabble with zero (0) editing. 

Tender foliage and rain on the roof. Cedar and petrichor and roses. Silk and steel. Smoke and blood.

Laughter.

A lopsided smile.

Home.

Home was fast asleep beside him, unaware of the halo of sunlight adorning his head. His cheek was resting on an ivory hand with the other hand hiding under the pillow. The bedding was riding low on his hips, showing the full tapestry of his scars. Each ragged, raised lump of flesh was right there, just inches away. It made him look vulnerable, he thought, and tired. No one should have that many scars...

He raised his arm and traced a finger down the length of a half-faded scar. It was just another tale, a testament to his survival...

Geoff watched as Vincent's eyes closed a little tighter before slowly fluttering open. A few soft noises escaped Vincent's lips as he blinked the sleep from his silver eyes. Earth-bound moons, Geoff thought with a smile as Vincent looked up to him.   "Geoff?" He raised his head from the pillow. "Go back to sleep, Vince. It's still early." Vincent nodded, yawning as he moved himself closer to Geoff's warmth. With an arm across Geoff's stomach, he put his head in the crook of Geoff's neck. He gave the tanned skin a sleepy kiss before his eyes closed once again. With another quiet yawn, he fell still once more.

Geoff pulled the blankets up to Vincent's shoulders before hugging the elf to his chest. He lived for these moments, these quiet, tender moments when it was so easy to pretend they were the only people in the world.

Geoff didn't have to pretend, though. Right now, in this moment, there was no world except for Vincent.

Vincent.

His Vincent.

His arms tightened around Vincent as he buried his face into the elf's raven hair. For years, he had wanted this. Ever since he saw the suit-clad elf smiling at an apple pie in the grocery store, he had known what he wanted. He wanted the elf. He wanted to fall asleep next to Vincent and wake up beside him.  

And now he had it.

His head came to rest on his pillow as he turned to look at the dresser. Vincent didn't know it, but there was a small box tucked away in the back of his sock drawer. Inside that small box was a small band made of white gold with a small pair of emeralds on either side of a small diamond. The box had been hiding there for months now, waiting...

Geoff's gaze fell back to Vincent once as Vincent mumbled something in his sleep. His heart hammered in his chest as he ran a hand down Vincent's spine; strong fingers came to rest on the small of Vincent's back as he pulled the elf closer. "I love you so much," Geoff whispered. "I love you so much it scares me. I never thought I could love anything as much as I love you. You're my everything, Vince; you're everything I've ever wanted. I love you so much and I never want be away from you. You're my home, my whole world. And I know everything's gonna be okay when you're with me. Even when I'm scared, I know it'll be okay. Because you're there." Tears pricked the corners of his eyes as his other hand pushed a strand of hair behind Vincent's pointed ear. "I wanna ask you something," he whispered as a tear slid down his cheek. "And I promise I'll do it soon. I just wanna practice first. So," a second tear slipped free as he hiccuped, "I wanna... I wanna ask..." With a sniffle and a shuddering breath, he gently cupped Vincent's cheek. "m-Marry me, Vincent," his voice had grown thick as the tears fell unchecked from his eyes, "m-m-marry me and make me the happ--happiest man a-alive..."

Vincent made a soft noise in his throat before opening his eyes. He blinked slowly as he looked up to Geoff, only to bolt upright as he saw the tears streaming down his face. "Geoff? Are you okay? What happened?" "I love you so much!" Geoff sobbed as he pulled Vincent back down to the bed. His arms crushed Vincent's face into his chest as he hugged him. "I'm so happy and I just can't--" "Geoff--" "I wanna marry you, Vincent!" He was rocking on the bed now, unaware of Vincent's hand frantically patting at his arm as he tried to wriggle free. "I wanna marry you and I wanna raise a family with you and I wanna get a house and--"

With a grunt, Vincent pushed himself free from the vice-like grip and rubbed his side, half-convinced Geoff was about to squeeze him in half. "Geoff, are you--" "Say yes," Geoff grabbed Vincent's hands and held them, his eyes staring imploringly up to Vincent. "I wanna--" "Yes." Vincent laughed. "Yes. I will. I'll marry you." "You will?" "Yes." "You will!" Geoff pulled Vincent back into his arms and hugged him once again, rolling to and fro as he held the elf...

...only to freeze a half-second later.

"You'll really marry me?" "Of course." Vincent wheezed as he tried to free himself once more. "I was going to ask you soon, if you didn't." "You wanna marry me?!" Sighing for more reasons than not being able to free himself from Geoff's embrace, he settled himself back down onto Geoff's chest and looked up to him. "Yes. I want to marry you, Geoff. I love you. I love you so much--" "You love me," Geoff half-asked as tears filled his eyes once more. Despite himself, Vincent laughed and kissed him. "I love you, Geoff. And I want to be your husband."

With a squeak better befitting a mouse, Geoff returned the kiss as he tangled a hand into Vincent's hair...

[obeymeimagines]

The Obey Me Characters as Achievement Hunter Quotes

AKA, I’m coming back from my slight hiatus with memes, featuring quotes from Ryan Haywood, Gavin Free, Geoff Ramsey, Jack Patillo, Jeremy Dooley and Lindsay Jones. Because I couldn’t fit Michael in there.

MC: I’m like a lightning rod for fucked. -Ryan Haywood

Lucifer: Why do I know the people that I know? -Gavin Free

Mammon: [Insert MC’s name here], how much would I have to pay for you to jack me off? -Geoff Ramsey

Leviathan: The world’s strongest bond is friendship! I watch anime! -Ryan Haywood

Satan: "Did you just refer to a knife as a people opener?” Should I not have? -Ryan Haywood

Asmodeus: It’s been a while since we’ve had a good dick bounce... -Geoff Ramsey

Beelzebub: I hide my emotions with french fries. -Jack Patillo

Belphegor: Take a nap, motherfucker! -Jack Patillo

Simeon: I don’t know about you guys, but I’m on a fucking adventure. -Jeremy Dooley

Solomon: There is no god, that’s why I’m winning. -Lindsay Jones

Luke: I’m trying SO hard to help you, but you just suck. -Geoff Ramsey

Diavolo: I imagine at some point in my life I’m going to need something up my ass. -Jack Patillo

Barbatos: I am the recipient of your fuckery. -Ryan Haywood

[fantomcomics]

What’s Out This Week? 12/18

Looking for something out-of-this-world to do on Thursday night? Come watch Toxic Avenger with us in the store!

Gung Ho #1 - Benjamin Von Eckartsberg and Thomas von Kummant

In the near future, the "White Plague" has almost completely decimated humanity, and civilization is only a sweet memory. Europe as a whole has become a danger zone, where survival is only possible within towns or fortified villages.  Enter orphaned brothers Zach and Archer Goodwoody, troublemaking teens who have just arrived at Fort Apache, and about to learn the hard rules of integration into the colony. Outside the walls lies a hostile and deadly environment, but inside is also a dangerous place, as the boys are about to find out. Benjamin von Eckartsberg and Thomas von Kummant deliver a creative and visual tour de force with jaw-dropping artwork that will transport you to a brand new post-apocalyptic world where the tension is palpable, and the wrong move will get you killed... or worse.

Klaus and the Life & Times of Joe Christmas #1 - Grant Morrison & Dan Mora

In the tradition of Grant Morrison's 2001 New X-Men Annual , BOOM! Studios presents a widescreen comic that catalogs the life and times of one Joe Christmas. Abandoned as a baby, Joe Christmas is taken in by Klaus. In this holiday calendar-inspired comic, experience 25 all new short stories of Klaus teaming up with Joe Christmas over the years!

The Low, Low Woods #1 (of 6) - Carmen Maria Machado & Dani

Shudder-To-Think, PA, has been on fire for years. The coal mines beneath it are long since abandoned. The woods are full of rabbits with human eyes, a deer woman who stalks hungry girls, and swaths of skinless men. And the people in Shudder-to-Think? Well, they're not doing so well either. When El and Octavia wake up in a movie theater with no memory of the last few hours of their lives, the two teenage dirtbags begin a surreal and terrifying journey to discover the truth about the strange town that they call home.

The Old Guard: Force Multiplied #1 (of 5) - Greg Rucka and  Leandro Fernandez

Andromache of Scythia and her band of soldiers are back in this second story chronicling the battles and burdens of their dubious immortality. Nile's addition to the team has given them new purpose and new direction, but when you've got 6,000 years of history at your back, the past is always ready to return-with a vengeance.

Project X-Mas #1 - Mark Millar and Top Secret

MARK MILLAR and Netflix have teamed up to give you the perfect Christmas gift-the sequel to one of the most beloved Millarworld projects since the dawn of time. The twist is that you don't know what it is, and like all good gifts, you're in for a nice surprise when you open the delivery boxes on December 18th. Can you guess what Santa's going to bring you??

Read Only Memories #1 (of 4) - Sina Grace and Stefano Simeone

Based on the hit game 2064: Read Only Memories, enter a cyberpunk universe like you've never seen it before!

Santa Cruz, California. A beach town just 50 miles from Neo-San Francisco. Lexi Rivers, former detective with the Neo-San Francisco Police Department, has left the big city lights behind in favor of opening her own agency. Valentine's Day. A time for celebrating love-or finding it. When a robot's human lover goes missing, Lexi will be faced with a case unlike any she's tackled yet, one which just might show her that not all is as it seems in this pleasant beach-side community...

Revenge Of The Cosmic Ghost Rider #1 (of 5) - Dennis "Hopeless" Hallum, Donny Cates, Scott Hepburn, and Geoff Shaw

Cosmic Ghost Rider is back, baby! But with a reputation like his, it's only a matter of time before the law catches up to the future Frank Castle and tries to put him in chains - too bad for the law, chains are Castle's weapons of choice these days. Now in an intergalactic prison, the Rider is going to turn his cage into an all-out cage match! Who's going to be the last alien standing?!

Skulldigger & Skeleton Boy #1 (of 6) - Jeff Lemire and Tonci Zonjic

Spiral City finds itself trapped in a vicious cycle of crime, corruption, and violence. With the heart of the city at stake, a vigilante rises in Skulldigger. However, when the nefarious Grimjim escapes from prison, will Skulldigger and his ward, Skeleton Boy, be enough to save Spiral City?

Star Wars: The Rise Of Kylo Ren #1 (of 4) - Charles Soule and Will Sliney

Young Ben Solo is legendary Jedi Luke Skywalker's most promising pupil. As the son of Rebel Alliance heroes Leia Organa and Han Solo, as well as Luke's own nephew, Ben has the potential to be a great force for light in the galaxy. But the Skywalker legacy casts a long shadow, the currents of the dark side run deep, and Darth Vader's blood runs in Ben's veins. Voices call from both his past and his future, telling him who he must be. He will shatter, he will be reforged, his destiny will be revealed. Snoke awaits. The Knights of Ren await. Ben Solo's path to his true self begins here.  

Tales From Harrow County: Death’s Choir #1 - Cullen Bunn and Naomi Franquiz

Ten years have passed since Emmy exited Harrow County, leaving her close friend Bernice as steward of the supernatural home. But World War II is in full swing, taking Harrow's young men and leaving the community more vulnerable than ever-and when a ghostly choir heralds the resurrection of the dead, Bernice must find a solution before the town is overrun.

The Visitor #1 (of 6) - Paul Levitz and Mj Kim

Unstoppable. Untraceable. Unkillable. This is how he changes the world... Who is the Visitor? Why are the leaders of the world terrified of him? And will they live long enough to find out?

Wonder Woman: Dead Earth #1 (of 4) - Daniel Warren Johnson

The celebrated creator of Murder Falcon and Extremity and artist of The Ghost Fleet, Daniel Warren Johnson brings bold sci-fi chops to his DC debut with a harrowing vision of Wonder Woman unlike anything you've ever seen. Princess Diana of Themyscira left paradise to save Man's World from itself. When Wonder Woman awakens from a centuries-long sleep to discover the Earth reduced to a nuclear wasteland, she knows she failed. Trapped alone in a grim future, Diana must protect the last human city from titanic monsters while uncovering its secret of this dead Earth-and how she may be responsible for it.

Star Wars: Empire Ascendant #1 - Charles Soule and Caspar Wijngaard

DESTINED FOR HOTH! •  Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa and smuggler Han Solo have have struck blow after winning blow against the Empire. The Rebels are digging in their defenses on the remote ice world of Hoth but how long will they truly be safe from their many enemies? •  Darth Vader will stop at nothing to crush the rebels but his efforts to locate their new base have been in vain. Will the dark side of the Force guide him to the missing rebels and to young Skywalker or mire the dark lord in the conflicts of his past? •  Despite a life riddled with treachery and destruction,  Doctor Aphra has found a family (of sorts). Former Imperial inspector Magna Tolvan and Aphra's young ward Vulaada will have to face the struggles of a life of rebellion...while Aphra reckons with her legacy.   •  Former Imperial loyalist turned cyborg bounty hunter BEILERT VALANCE is taking on a dangerous new mission. And the lives of the entire Rebellion-including his old buddy HAN SOLO's-are at stake should he fail!

This week’s bursting with amazing titles, so whatcha picking out, Fantomites?  

[midnightiscoming-kasabian]

Nine Songs: Serge Pizzorno [2/2]

“Oscillations” by Silver Apples

“The flow on this song and this album rhythmically is amazing, and in terms of that I don’t know a better record. It still feels brand new, I still play it to people that have never heard it and it shocks people, the album is from 1968 and that’s just insane. Simeon Coxe made his own synths, he took a basic electronic course and created his own. To this day Silver Apples sounds just as fresh as anything else. “During West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum I was bang into Silver Apples. Previously, I was using a lot of loops and electronic drums, but with the Silver Apples album it was way more tape-based. The way something sounds like a sample but it’s actually someone playing it, I was amazed that you can still get that machine-like feel but it was actually played. “After hearing this I started pitch-bending. This was just through watching YouTube videos, I didn’t do a course or anything, I was opening up old toys. For example, say you get an old piano, if you disconnect certain wires you can reconnect them or tap them and get a weird electronic noise. That experimenting was based on how he got his sound in this track. Pitch bending was quite a big thing and that noise has such an atmosphere.”

“Rain or Shine” by Young Fathers

“If I’m writing, usually I’ll use imagery. I’m very visual the way I write and I tend to use stories. I get that same sense from Young Fathers, I love this band, they’re piecing together things in song writing in a really interesting way.

“They’re really melodic but then if you hear what’s making up the actual music, it’s a lot of different noises and beeps. There’s a real rawness to it that feels spontaneous. It feels like they’re performance art almost, It feels like an art installation and to back it up they’ve got the beautiful melody and hook that draws you in, it’s really good to run to. Meditate with this on, it’s great.

“They’ve got incredible backing vocals and chants and it’s such a powerful weapon when you backdrop it to digital distortion and powerful music. There’s something so impressive about good harmonies. When you hear or see live those Beach Boys or Eagles melodies, there’s something really beautiful and mystifying about the soaring human voice, but when you juxtapose these with something so rough, it becomes really special.

“When you hear music that makes you want to go in the studio straight away, that’s so important and I’m always looking for that and listening to ‘Rain or Shine’ I was desperate to get back in the studio. What I like is that Young Fathers commit to an idea; they commit to a loop or a little synth that’s maybe out of tune. It’s those little details, and that band make you want to get back to song writing - that’s what everyone is looking for.”

“Guillotine” by Death Grips

“Honestly, ‘Guillotine’ frightens the hell out of me, and I feel like there’s humour in that. Death Grips had a gig where they brought on a TV screen, didn’t turn up and everyone just went. They’re pure performance art.

“When I first heard it I was so excited, because I’d never heard anything like it before. I thought ‘Fucking hell man, this is the real deal.’ What I love is how soft everything feels after it, or you feel like you’re not pushing it far enough. They’re phenomenal.

“This weird, Berlin techno, grime, hip-hop, distortion, doom rock, it’s absolutely petrifying. I always use this one in the dressing room to clear out the indie-schmindie crowd. They wander through the door wanting to have a drink and I get the speakers out, put this fucker on and see if anyone stays. Usually there’s only one kid, who thinks it’s crazy and is ‘What’s this?’ And the rest of them are out of there, who just don’t understand this and are off to listen to some indie rubbish. I love that, it’s a test for me.

“The Money Store is fucking unbelievable. Their song writing, beat making and their structure; it’s hot, it’s the real deal. In a live arena that energy and that industrial power has a connection. With their ear-bending synth drops, we connect on a live thing for sure.”

“Mono” by Beak

“These guys are probably my new favourite band at the moment. I mean, they’re not new anymore but if someone asks me to recommend them anything it would have to be this band. I think Geoff Barrow is an incredible artist and to have this project, where he can just drop tunes now and again and they’re constantly making stuff, is phenomenal.

“It just talks to me, this is how you use synths, you know what I mean? That’s a knowledge. I think that’s why it makes me relax so much, because every choice is perfection and with every sound, I need to know what it is. I geek out on that. It’s minimal, it’s weird ‘80s horror music, it’s kraut-rock and into early electro - it’s all the things I like and by a band that play live. It’s the perfect band.

“I think I might have just read an interview when I discovered them, he mentioned that he was making other music, so I was interested from that. ‘Mono’ was one of the first things they’d put out, they were talking about a specific synth, that’s like a mystical thing that no-one’s got, and they were using that to get their sound. So if you want to learn the synths, listen to this track.

“You can get some incredible shit on your IPhone, it’s not about what it is, it’s about the noise that’s being made. It’s not a snobbery of ‘It’s got to be from the late ‘70’s’, please, it’s not like that - it’s just knowing the tone and sound of oscillations. Listen to me, I’m just sounding like some mad old synth wizard.”

The S.L.P. is released 30 August via Columbia

The Line of Best Fit | Words: Maddy Smith | 23 August 2019

[private-jaye]

Fahc Custom Heists part 7

The heist to end all heists... or so we'd like to think.

Grand heist:

Aim:

Michael

(Freddy Wong)Ryan

Jack

(Ray William Johnson)Gavin

(IJustine)Ray

Geoff

Plan:

Two teams, team two is team Jack. Consisting of Gavin, Michael and Jack. Their job will be to get a cargobob, two random cars and a tank. They will put the three land vehicles atop copblock alley. Michael and Gavin then get two box trucks and create a funnel in the alley.

Team Geoff will attempt to rob four stores before the police catch on, then they will lead the cops into the alley, jack will deploy the bomb ridden random cars as everyone gets onto the safe roof.

When the cops are decimated everyone will get into the cargobob and fly to the airport where they will switch to a titan. Thw titan will take them all to mt. Chiliad.

Result:

They collected their outfits almost without issue, Ryan's on a murder break but accidentally killed Gavin. By this point they already have the two box trucks

While setting up every other vehicle, the only trouble they had from cops was because of a simeon vehicle.

Team Geoff successfully pulled off all four robberies, but a problem arose when Jack's accuracy with the bombs was bad. All in all they got out of that bit alive and with the tank.

It was a tight race with all the cops and five stars, but they made it into the titan and flew off onto mt. Chiliad.

Until Gavin blew everyone up with cop choppers on the way there.

[atowndailynews]

Atascadero Professional Firefighters endorse Geoff Auslen for Supervisor

Atascadero Professional Firefighters endorse Geoff Auslen for Supervisor

Geoff Auslen Geoff Auslen is running for SLO County District 2 Supervisor – On March 16, Geoff Auslen announced that the Atascadero Professional Firefighters have endorsed Auslen for Supervisor of San Luis Obispo County’s new Second Supervisorial District. The new district includes the communities of San Miguel, San Simeon, Cambria, Cayucos, Lake Nacimiento, West Templeton, West Paso Robles,…

[cash1725jaime]

QPR Leeds United – as it happened | Football | The Guardian

Leeds v qpr score - Queens Park Rangers Leeds United live score, video stream and H2H results - SofaScore

We were more calm and if we win by one goal and you have five minutes left, then everybody is nervous in the stadium. And we try to pass this kind of match where we are winning leeds v qpr score, more relaxed, more calm. We probably didn't create enough in the first half. In the second half we started well and at with 20 minutes to go we had a big, big chance. All of these features can help you decide on Queens Park Rangers vs.

Leeds United game prediction. Leeds v qpr score though SofaScore doesn't offer direct betting, it provides the best odds and shows you which sites offer live betting. Eventually Harrison wins a fre-kick in the corner after receiving the ball from Klich and zooming past Kane.

Both men receive a stern talking-to and clash again — legally — moments csore. He floats in the free-kick from the left, which finds an unmarked Wells who can only side-foot badly replays epl match from five yards out. But the Leeds striker lashes an early strike high and wide when the situation called for calm.

Oh dear. His trickery gets him into the box and he squares to Chair on the D, but his low effort leeds v qpr score rushed and trickles wide. Leeds v qpr score the resulting corner, Costa picks the ball up again and wins a free-kick on the left. QPR lead! But he controlled it with his hand! Unwittingly, but unequivocally. Leeds are furious. The goals stands. Hernandez whips in a glorious cross, but qpg no Leeds players can meet it.

Marc Pugh tries a through ball, but Bright Samuel is caught offside. Offside, Leeds United. Luke Ayling tries a through ball, but Ezgjan Alioski is caught offside. Conceded by Jordan Stevens. Attempt missed. Eberechi Eze Queens Park Rangers left footed shot from the right side of the box is high and wide to the left. Luke Ayling Leeds Leeds v qpr score is shown the yellow card. Geoff Cameron Queens Park Lewds is shown the yellow card.

Kalvin Phillips Leeds United is shown the red card. Kelly may have conceded the penalty, but more than made up for it with leeds v qpr score fantastic save from Bamford. Their next Championship game is at Blackburn the following Tuesday night.

Search Sky Sports. Latest Sky Bet Championship Odds. Simeon Gholam simgholam. Fill 2 Copy 11 Created with Sketch. Saturday 18 JanuaryUK. Prutton's Championship predictions Tuchel: Abraham England hopes won't sway selection How a pivotal month could shape Spurs' next steps 'She likes talking, I like fighting! Roma vs Inter. Inter vs Juventus. Juventus leedz Napoli. Roma vs Juventus. Lazio vs Roma. Roma vs Napoli.

QPR 1-0 Leeds United – as it happened

Milan vs Juventus. Bayern vs Other H2H stats. Barcelona vs Man City H2H stats. Real Madrid vs Barcelona H2H stats. Juventus qqpr Lazio H2H stats. Welcome to the new matchstat. Livescores provided by Livescore.

Please note: This site requires javascript to be enabled leeds v qpr score full functionality. Toggle navigation Leeds v qpr score stat. Queens Park Rangers. Leeds Squad I. Meslier Kiko Casilla E. Caprile L. Ayling B. Douglas R. Koch L. Cooper S. Dallas P. Struijk L.

[t-baba]

Great DevTools improvements in Chrome 75 and 76

#394 — June 5, 2019

Read on the Web

Frontend Focus

What's New in Chrome 75 for Developers — Pete Le Page highlights changes in the next stable version of Chrome, with the most exciting things being a way to create lower latency canvases and sharing files with the Web Share API. Here’s a related video on changes to DevTools in version 75. If you're on the Dev channel, you might also want to check out what's new in Chrome 76's DevTools (which includes a feature that guesses what CSS properties you want based on a value, e.g. bold would suggest font-weight).

Google Developers

A Drop-In CMS That Works Anywhere — Find 100s of frontend modules for common needs like CMS, forms, and more. Free and open-source. Built by the community so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Sign up for free.

AnyMod sponsor

A Quick Look at the First Public Working Draft for Color Adjust Module 1 — The spec introduces three new CSS properties that help inform how much control the user agent should have when determining the visual appearance of a rendered page based on user preferences.

Geoff Graham

Will Only Enterprise Chrome Installs Have Full Ad-Blocking? An Update on Manifest v3 — A rather deep and technical thread but essentially Chrome is deprecating the blocking capabilities of the webRequest API in its new standards Chrome extensions will have to adhere to. This will likely have impacts on how things like ad blockers work. The Register has a more accessible writeup.

Simeon Vincent

How Frontend Developers Can Help To Bridge The Gap Between Designers And Developers — Stefan Kaltenegger shares his personal experience and advice on what frontend developers can do on their end to better bridge the gap between designers and developers.

Smashing Magazine

▶  Web Typography: A Non-English Perspective — English speakers make up less than 5% of the world’s population — this talk covers the intricacies of ensuring web fonts display and are laid out correctly, regardless of language.

Hui Jing Chen

💻 Jobs

Frontend Developer at X-Team (Remote) — Join the most energizing community for developers. Work from anywhere with the world's leading brands.

X-Team

Land a New Dev Job on Vettery — Vettery specializes in tech roles and is completely free for job seekers.

Vettery

📰 News

Release Notes for Safari Technology Preview 83 — Several changes to the web inspector, plus multiple rendering fixes, and CSS implementations.

Jon Davis (WebKit)

Firefox Dev Tools Can Now Show Why a CSS Property is Having No Effect — This handy new feature provides a brief explainer as to why a CSS property isn’t functioning.

Nicolas Chevobbe on Twitter

Mozilla's Firefox Starts Blocking Third-Party Cookies by Default

Emil Protalinski

Firefox Reality VR Browser Is Coming to Oculus Quest Headset

Janko Roettgers

📘 Tutorials & Opinion

Building The Most Inaccessible Site Possible with A Perfect Lighthouse Score — Yikes. This experiment attempts to prove that automatic accessibility testing is only really a first step and that manual testing is vital.

Manuel Matuzovic

Movin' Modals Along a Path — Rather than just having your modal dialogs or alerts appear out of nowhere, how about having them fly in from outside the viewport? Here’s how.

Chris Coyier

Self-Host Your Static Assets — Outlines the disadvantages of hosting your static assets ‘off-site’, and the “overwhelming benefits” of hosting them on your own origin.

Harry Roberts

Free Guide: The Evolution of JavaScript Tooling — Learn the pros and cons of some of the most popular JavaScript frameworks and libraries, including Angular, React and Vue.

SENCHA sponsor

Cake or Death: AMP and The Worrying Power Dynamics of The Web — A cautionary viewpoint on Google’s AMP and how such ‘syndication’ results in “valuing content that is fast over content that is right”.

Andrew Betts

Patterns for Promoting PWA Installation on Mobile — How to promote the installation of Progressive Web Apps and best practices to follow.

Google Developers

Extract Critical CSS — How to extract and inline critical CSS to improve the perceived rendering performance of your pages.

Milica Mihajlija

▶  The Future of Web Animation — “in terms of animation on the web, we’re just getting started”

Sarah Drasner

Prevent Page Scrolling When a Modal is Open

Brad Wu

💡 Quick Tutorial of the Week

supported by

How React Hooks Can Help Make Your Code More Reusable

Exclusively for Frontend Focus readers, Eric Bishard has put together a brief tutorial on the basics of React hooks and how creating your own custom hooks can help when it comes to code reusability and working with other developers.

This week's tutorial is sponsored by KendoReact. Learn how to quickly build a sleek-looking dashboard following Eric Bishard’s step-by-step instructions in “Let's Build a Sales Dashboard with React” (+ source code).

🔧 Code, Tools & Resources

Puppeteer Recorder: A Chrome Extension That Creates Puppeteer Scripts — Hit record, do things in your browser, and this extension generates JavaScript code you can then run that uses Puppeteer to reproduce the actions headlessly.

Checkly

Studio 3T Makes SQL Migration to MongoDB, Powerfully Simple

Studio 3T sponsor

Scene.js: A JavaScript & CSS Timeline-Based Animation Library — Plenty of fluid examples on the site.

Daybrush

IP Geolocation API with Country Information — A free real-time IP to Geolocation JSON API with detailed countries data integration.

Madis Väin

Apple's 'SF Symbols' — A Collection of User Interface Glyphs — Includes a variable fonts component for handling weight adjustments.

Apple

   🗓 Upcoming Events

CSS Day, June 13-14 — Amsterdam, Netherlands — Features eight world-class sessions by eight world-class speakers about curious, 'badly-known', or otherwise interesting CSS features.

CSSCamp 2019, July 17 — Barcelona, Spain — A one-day, one-track conference for web designers and developers.

An Event Apart, July 29-31 — Washington, D.C. — A popular three-day conference that focuses on all things relating to digital design and user experience.

Front Conference, August 29-30 — Zurich, Switzerland — A two-day double-track conference for everyone involved from concept to implementation.

by via Frontend Focus http://bit.ly/2wBu2AV

[wilsonneate]

GEOFF BARROW KEEPS HIS PECKER UP WITH BEAK>

(Interview done by me in 2009, originally published in BLURT magazine)

After Portishead’s second album, Geoff Barrow quit music for five years. Since the 2008 release of Third, though, he’s remained active, as boss of the Invada label, as a producer (The Horrors’ Primary Colours) and now as a member of BEAK>, a Bristol trio featuring Billy Fuller (Fuzz Against Junk) and Matt Williams (Team Brick).

Whereas nearly eleven years passed between the second and third Portishead albums, BEAK> hatched their debut in just twelve days. An exercise in what Barrow calls “instantaneous writing,” this is a Krautrock-influenced affair, infused with a touch of proggy weirdness, some drones and out-there noise and a bit of doom-metal heft. Although BEAK> shares a few influences with Portishead’s last album, particularly an affinity for Simeon Coxe’s Silver Apples, Barrow also sees BEAK> and Portishead as worlds apart. Exploring a largely different creative process, traveling to gigs on budget airlines, carrying his own gear and playing small venues all add up to a welcome change, one that he finds re-energizing.

Barrow spoke to BLURT about working with BEAK> and, among other things, his love of Can, his ambivalent relationship with Bristol and the difficulties posed by being a singing drummer.

BLURT: As an expat Bristolian, I was immediately struck by the track titles on the BEAK> album, many of which are the names of places around Bristol. Is that just playful or is there a link to the music?

GEOFF BARROW: It was very playful but, at the same time, we kind of said, “No, no that doesn’t sound like [the village,] Pill – that one sounds like Barrow Gurney.” So there was a connection, but it was definitely a playful connection. But when I think of the place, Pill, I do think of that tune [“Pill”], and when I think of Barrow Gurney, I do think of that tune, cos it’s a sort of mad synthesizer tune.

BLURT: Yeah, the sound is pretty manic – so the title “Barrow Gurney” refers to the Barrow Gurney psychiatric hospital, rather than the village of Barrow Gurney itself? When my grandfather was frustrated with us he used to say, “You’ll drive me out Barrow Gurney, you will.”

GB: Yeah, right. I know a lot of people who went to Barrow Gurney and a few mates of mine worked there as well, as mental health nurses. It’s closed now. It’s all Care in the Community now. They all do crack…. That was Thatcher for you.

BLURT: And is “The Cornubia” a reference to the Cornubia pub in Bristol?

GB: Yeah, it’s a proper Real Ale pub…. As I was saying that, I felt like a proper Real Ale drinker [laughs]. We had an Invada night at the Cornubia and we got banned from putting on gigs there again. It’s a good pub. It’s one of the only real pubs left standing in Bristol. I think it actually survived the bombing in the [Second World] War. If you see pictures of it, it literally stands alone. It’s the most peculiar kind of setting because everything else was destroyed either side of it, in front of it and behind it, and it just stood.

BLURT: Bristol was bombed heavily in the Blitz. My mum’s house actually took a direct hit, killing most of her family.

GB: Bloody hell! Bristol got hit badly during the War. If you look at photos of how it was before the War and afterwards, you can really see it. It’s pretty different.

BLURT: A lot of Bristol musicians have stayed in the area. Do you feel a strong connection to the West Country?

GB: I don’t know really. I just haven’t really been anywhere else. It’s home. At times I don’t like Bristolians and I don’t like what the city’s become. I don’t really like the history of the city, either, but this is where I live.

BLURT: When you mention the history, are you referring to the slave trade in particular? [In the 18th century, Bristol prospered as a key British port in the triangular trade.]

GB: Yeah, and the corruption. It’s always been corrupt. Do you know that book, A Darker History of Bristol by Derek Robinson? It’s a thin book that takes you on a little historical trip into why Bristolians are the way they are. They’re pretty apathetic. They don’t really want to join any side. They just want to get pissed and have an all right time, really. It’s got that kind of port mentality, you know? Like Liverpool. It’s got that about it. People just can’t be bothered down here, really. The only people who can be bothered are thieves and mercenaries.

BLURT: You recently organized a big event at the Colston Hall in Bristol featuring bands on your Invada label. There’s been controversy surrounding that venue because it’s named after the Bristol merchant Edward Colston, a prominent figure in the slave trade. Do you think the name will actually get changed or do people not give a shit?

GB: Bristolians don’t give a shit about it, but the middle classes do. So it will change its name eventually because it’s like having a place called the Hitler Rooms. It doesn’t sound great, does it? Or the Goebbels Village Hall.

BLURT: It doesn’t really have a good ring to it.

GB: Maybe the Goebbels Community Center? I think it’s got to change and eventually it’ll just happen. It’s just a name, but you’ve got to move forward. So yeah, we did the Invada Invasion there. We took the place over with Mogwai and a load of other bands. It was a really good night for people into alternative music. That’s something that just doesn’t happen in Bristol, and we just thought, “Right, we’ll do it.”

BLURT: Was BEAK> a collaboration that had been on the cards for some time?

GB: I think we’d all always liked what each other did. I’ve always liked Billy and his bass playing and stuff, and I’ve always been a fan of Matt’s. I mean, that’s the reason I put out their records on Invada. And we played together at a New Year’s Eve party, and me and Billy said it’d be great to do it again – and that was two years ago. Then we bumped into each other and said it again. And Matt (as Team Brick) had played on the last Portishead record and we had this bit of free time, so we did it. But there was no discussion about it, really. We just went in there and set up the microphones, and the first thing we played was basically the first track on the record, “Backwell.” As you hear it, it’s pretty much the first time we played together, which was really refreshing.

BLURT: So was the record largely put together from improvisation and, for want of a better word, jamming?

GB: It all came about in that way, although I’m not really into the term “jamming” – it was more about a kind of instantaneous writing, really. Cos jamming, to me, reminds me of bands that stick on a chord and play a solo for a couple of days, do you know what I mean? Like the saxophone player goes [approximates ostentatious jazzy sax solo] and it’s all about getting your chops in, and it’s just bollocks. For me, it was about being sat there and being aware of the space you’re in and the sound you’re creating: being totally aware of it and then moving things forward and just trying to write instantaneously. It was like a flow of consciousness, really – whether it’s lyrics or melodies or whatever. We actually played things a couple of times when we said, “Yeah, that’s a really good idea, but it completely went and fucked up there. Shall we just have another go at it?” And it wouldn’t be a couple of days later, it would be in the same half an hour. But in the end we’d usually go back to the first take and say, “Oh, it had something about it.” So, like I said, there wasn’t really that much discussion. We’d listen to a track after we’d played it and it’d be like, “Well, that’s done!” And there wasn’t a sense of it being throwaway, it was more like it just being refreshing. I mean, the album’s got bits that fuck up on it, but that’s what gives it its character – rather than it being put on Pro Tools and some bloke moving the snare drum so it’s in time. It’s not that kind of music, you know.

BLURT: Do you think the experience of the way you work with BEAK> will feed back into how you do things with Portishead?

GB: Well, the thing is that Portishead has actually always had that aspect of it. Like the song “Numb” on Dummy – it was written by me being sat in one room with a sampler and Ade [Adrian Utley], Gary [Baldwin] and Clive [Deamer] basically doing the same thing that BEAK> does. But that came from a hip-hop loop mentality. So it would be like, “Yeah, play that again,” and I’d just stick it in the sampler and loop it up. So Portishead have always had that, really. It’s just that people get a different impression because we’ve taken so long over records. Because of that, people perceive that it’s a more traditional setup. Portishead is weird – it can be instantaneous. Like sometimes the riff is written in an afternoon, but the beat takes twelve months. It’s just kind of fucked. And anything that can help my brain to be more productive in a writing way is great, but you can’t leave one record, do nothing and then start a new record without feeding your brain. That’s why I gave up music for five years, really, after the second Portishead tour, because I was kind of empty of ideas. I didn’t want to prove anything, didn’t want to move forward.

BLURT: In addition to improvising the music, you also made up the lyrics as you recorded the BEAK> tracks. When you play live, do you invent new ones?

GB: Yeah, basically, there’s a general vibe with the lyrics; there’s always one word that fits in it – like the sound of the pronunciation, how it suits the mood – and then you just kind of make it up. It’s interesting because playing drums and singing, it’s odd anyway.

BLURT: You’re now part of a great tradition of singing drummers: Robert Wyatt, This Heat’s Charles Hayward, er, Karen Carpenter…. Is it difficult?

GB: Yeah, it’s pretty mad, singing drummers [laughs]. You know, I’ve never done it before. It’s not too bad. It can throw you a bit. Thinking about the lyrics at the same time as you’re playing, it’s like tapping your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time or playing keepie-uppie with a football.

BLURT: You’ve said that you don’t really enjoy playing live with Portishead. Are you enjoying it more with BEAK>?

GB: I am, yeah, to be honest. Recently we’ve been playing not gigs, but little places – like we played a gallery the other day, without a PA. We’ve been playing most of the gigs like that, without a PA. We just set up and it’s refreshing; there’s no real pressure. There’s a huge difference between that and playing Coachella, you know what I mean? I engineer the drum sound when Portishead play live and me and Ade are like the MDs of it. And with BEAK> it’s a very simple kind of setup: playing live is pretty much as we recorded the album. There’s a couple of echo boxes we use to get that kind of dark, deep reverb sound, and it works and I’m not stressing over it. So, yeah, it has been really enjoyable. I mean, setting up your own kit and setting up your own sound and all that kind of stuff has been quite funny as well. When you compare touring with Portishead, with a crew of eighteen, to BEAK> on an easyJet flight with a synth in a suitcase and a snare drum in your pants, then basically it’s a different vibe. But it’s all really refreshing and gives you a different take on things.

BLURT: So doing BEAK> has been re-energizing for you, musically?

GB: Yeah, it has been. I think Ade finds it incredibly refreshing to play with other people. And Beth [Gibbons], as she’s writing her songs, it comes from a different part anyway – so it’s all good for feeding us. Our brains being fed like that was what brought the last Portishead record about.

BLURT: Some of the influences I heard on the BEAK> album were, maybe, “Church of Anthrax,” Tony Conrad and Faust, Silver Apples, Can. Are these things you’ve all been listening to?

GB: What was that first one?

BLURT: “Church of Anthrax,” a track by Terry Riley and John Cale, from 1971 – very much in a Krautrock vein….

GB: I don’t know it, but it sounds great! [laughs] We’re definitely into lots and lots of different music, especially the Can thing. I think we’re definitely influenced by them. I think they’re an incredible band, and if we’ve got anywhere near to where they were…that’s just brilliant. We didn’t try to sound like them, though. It’s just where I’ve found myself rhythmically, coming out of being influenced by hip hop and electronic music and having a vibe where it’s got a beat and it’s heavy, but heavy in the right way – it’s not heavy sonically, like, “I’m gonna smash your head in with this sound.” Our influences are pretty wide, especially what Billy and Matt are into. Matt’s really into the Cardiacs and Billy’s really into bands like Plastic People of the Universe, and I’m into that as well: music that’s really out there, but that still retains melody and rhythm. I really like Moondog, too – that was a big influence on the last Portishead record.

BLURT: And Silver Apples….

GB: Yeah, yeah – I’m actually interviewing Simeon for a magazine. We met at All Tomorrow’s Parties and it was really weird because he was playing in Bristol and he asked me to play the drums, but I didn’t do it. If it was now, I would have done it, but back then I hadn’t played drums in quite a long time. So maybe we’ll just arrange it again. Maybe I’ll see if he wants to play again. But yeah, our influences are there. We’re not embarrassed by them. We think they’re brilliant bands.

BLURT: Some musicians I’ve interviewed emphasize that they don’t listen to any other music, so as to avoid being influenced. That’s not the case with you, then?

GB: Well, it’s really strange because I actually listen to very, very little music. An incredibly small amount. Like I’ll get into a Silver Apples track or one Can album, Ege Bamyasi, and I don’t want to hear any more. I just want to hear that one. I think it’s just a perfect record. It’s weird: I’ve always made more music than I’ve ever listened to. I don’t know much about other artists and I don’t know about their techniques or anything – I’d like to! – but Ade’s kind of the opposite. He’s a walking encyclopedia of music, but I just like to make music, really. And he does as well, of course. Ege Bamyasi is an absolutely genius record. I first heard Can on [BBC] Radio 1. It was Mark E. Smith on Radio 1 talking about his favorite tracks. It was around 1990 or something, when I was listening to A Tribe Called Quest and Gang Starr and stuff like that. And Can’s “Vitamin C” came on and I was bowled over. It was just like the first time I ever heard Public Enemy as a kid. I thought Can were a new band, and I thought they were the greatest band that ever lived [laughs]. I still think that tune is just unbelievable. No one’s even gone close to it, really.

BLURT: Talking of Can, did you see that recent BBC documentary, Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany?

GB: Yeah! What I absolutely loved about everybody in it was their true feeling that they were just doing it because they were doing it – for no financial gain or anything else. They were just really solid in their musical form, and they were still there. Which is a really lovely thing.

[rabbittstewcomics]

Episode 262

Comics Reviews:

Batman: Three Jokers 1 by Geoff Johns, Jason Fabok, Brad Anderson

Teen Titans Annual 2 by Robbie Thompson, Eduardo Pansica, Julio Ferreira, Marcelo Maiolo

Daredevil Annual 1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Chris Mooneyham, Greg Underwood, Rachelle Rosenberg

Fantastic Four: Antithesis 1 by Mark Waid, Neal Adams, Mark Farmer

Fortnite Nexus War by Donny Cates, Greg Land, Jay Leisten, Frank D'Armata

Mega-Man: Fully Charged 1 by AJ Marchisello, Marcus Rinehart, Stefano Simeone

Bomb Queen: Trump Card 1 by Jimmie Robinson

Broken Gargoyles 1 by Bob Salley, Stan Yak

Bug Bites 1 by Corinne Roberts

Goldie Vance: Larceny in La La Land by Hope Larson

Leap M 1 by Doug Wood, Matt Battaglia

40 Seconds 1 by Jeremy Haun, Christopher Mitten, Brett Weldele

Mars Attacks Red Sonja 1 by John Layman, Fran Struken

No Heroine by Frank Gogol, Chris Madd, Shawna Madd

Canto: The Hollow Men 1 by David Booher, Drew Zucker, Vittorio Astone

Locke & Key: In Pale Battalions Go 1 by Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez, Jay Fotos

Burning Tree by Nuna Garrido Lecca

Additional Reviews: Secret Window, Vertigo, Class Action Park, Plain Janes, Owl House

News: Comixology deal with Dark Horse, Powerpuff Girls TV show, Damian Wayne developments, Nicole Stevenson, Resident Evil Netflix series, Nocturnal nenamed Nocterra, Kelly Marie Tran to voice Raya for Disney, Non-Stop Spider-Man in January, Chadwick Boseman, Mulan to all Disney+ subscribers in December, New Mutants

Trailers: Enola Holmes, Bly Manor

Comics Countdown:

Wynd 3 by James Tynion IV, Michael Dialynas

Flash 760 by Joshua Williamson, Christian Duce, Rafa Sandoval, Jordi Tarragona

Suicide Squad 8 by Tom Taylor, Daniel Sampere, Adriano Lucas

X-Men 11 by Jonathan Hickman, Leinil Francis Yu, Sunny Gho

Batman: Three Jokers 1 by Geoff Johns, Jason Fabok, Brad Anderson

Usagi Yojimbo 12 by Stan Sakai, Tom Luth

Question: Deaths of Vic Sage 4 by Jeff Lemire, Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz

Nailbiter Returns 4 by Joshua Williamson, Adam Guzowski, Mike Henderson

Locke & Key: In Pale Battalions Go 1 by Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez, Jay Fotos

Ghosted in LA 12 by Sina Grace, Siobhan Keenan, Cathy Le

Check out this episode!

[gadgetsrevv]

England 4-0 Bulgaria, LIVE stream online: Euro 2020 qualifying football as it happened at Wembley

Harry Kane‘s hat-trick helped blow away Bulgaria and continue England’s Euro 2020 qualification cakewalk.

After finishing third in the inaugural Nations League over the summer, the Three Lions got their international season under way at the stadium they hope to end the campaign at when Wembley hosts the Euro 2020 final.

England are among the favourites to lift the trophy next summer and qualification for the finals is well in hand, with March’s drubbings of the Czech Republic and Montenegro followed by a 4-0 win against Bulgaria thanks to Kane’s treble and a Raheem Sterling goal.

Despite humility being the buzzword around the camp in the build-up, this was the kind of result expected by the sell-out Wembley crowd on Saturday.

Relive the action from Wembley!

Live Updates

New updates availableRefresh

ES COVERAGE

2019-09-06T08:10:09.996Z

Welcome to the Evening Standard’s LIVE coverage of the Euro 2020 qualifier between England and Bulgaria at Wembley Stadium.

2019-09-07T13:16:13.720Z

Popov seeking a piece of history

Bulgaria captain Ivelin Popov hopes he can add some memorabilia to his collection today.

Striker Popov owns the shirt of the only Bulgaria international to score at England’s national stadium, having bought Georgi Asparuhov’s shirt at an auction.

Asparuhov scored in a 1-1 draw with the Three Lions in 1968 in a game where Geoff Hurst also netted and Popov is dreaming of following in his footsteps in a Euro 2020 qualifier.

He will lead his side out today, having been part of the team who were defeated 4-0 at Wembley in a Euro 2012 qualifier nine years ago.

He said on Friday: “It is every player’s dream, everyone wants to score at Wembley, I bought the shirt at an auction and it is mine.”

2019-09-07T13:22:39.916Z

Southgate wants England to lift spirits amid Brexit chaos

Gareth Southgate is “conscious” that England are tasked with helping to give the nation a feel-good factor amid an uncertain political backdrop.  

With confusion and unpredictability surrounding Brexit and a potential general election, the United Kingdom still seemingly remains divided.  

The Three Lions helped alleviate such concerns for a period on their run to the World Cup semi-finals last summer but the unrest remains.  

With the England cricket team – and in particular the superb Ashes Test-winning innings from Ben Stokes almost a fortnight ago lifting spirits – Southgate is now aware it is he and his players who many will turn to for light relief.  

Asked if football can give the country something to feel good about, he told BBC Radio 5 Live: “Yes, I’m very conscious of that. We have helped to provide joy at a time when there isn’t a lot about for people. The cricket team have done that in a couple of significant moments already this year and I have loved watching that.  

“We all love those moments, sport should do that – sport should take you away from the day-to-day and allow us to dream and allow us to be excited about things that, in the overall scheme of things aren’t important, there are far more important things but we can bring joy to people and it is a privilege to be in a position to be able to do it.”

2019-09-07T13:24:05.140Z

Rashford looking to Kane for inspiration

  Marcus Rashford has revealed Harry Kane’s prowess in front of goal is driving him on to better things. Rashford, who has 10 international goals, is likely to line up alongside Kane today. Captain Kane harbours an impressive scoring rate for his country, but is even more prolific in training.

And Rashford tries to compete with his team-mate in shooting drills to make himself a better player.

“We use each other’s strengths to make each other better and if you watch training, then you’d see how it all works,” he said.

“I could use Harry Kane as an example, he’s one of the best finishers that I’ve played with and whenever we do finishing, in my head, it’s about being as close to him as possible.

“So if he scores six, you want to score six, if he scores seven, you want to score eight. So little things like that are the bits that people never see, even though we’re fighting for the same position, or to be in the same team, we really do drive each other on.

“It’s very important that you have that sort of atmosphere within a team.”

2019-09-07T14:39:29.000Z

Team news

England XI: Pickford; Trippier, Keane, Maguire, Rose; Henderson, Rice, Barkley; Sterling, Rashford, Kane

Subs: Heaton, Pope, Alexander-Arnold, Chilwell, Gomez, Mings, Winks, Mount, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Maddison, Sancho, Wilson

  Bulgaria XI: I liev, S. Popov, Bodurov, Bozhikov, Nedyalkov, Sarmov, Ivanov, I. Popov, Malinov, Wanderson, Marcelino

2019-09-07T14:41:53.050Z

Lingard misses out

England have confirmed that Jesse Lingard has returned to Manchester United after suffering from illness.

You may not think Lingard is a big loss considering his general lack of goals or assists for United, but Southgate certainly likes him.

Still, that could well mean a debut for Mason Mount.

2019-09-07T14:46:44.090Z

Gareth Southgate did not experiment with his England team for the Euro 2020 qualifier against Bulgaria at Wembley as Kieran Trippier earned a recall.

The Atletico Madrid right-back, who left Tottenham in the close season, was handed a start, having been dropped for the summer’s Nations League finals.

Manchester United midfielder Jesse Lingard is the only notable absentee as he has left the squad due to illness and will play no part in Tuesday’s game with Kosovo.

2019-09-07T15:27:15.896Z

England vs Bulgaria stat pack

  England have won 22 of their last 25 World Cup or European Championship qualifiers at home – their last defeat was back in 2007.

Gareth Southgate’s side are looking for their 16th consecutive home win in qualifying, shipping just three goals in that period.

The Three Lions are also unbeaten against Bulgaria over the years, picking up six wins and four draws.

Raheem Sterling has four goals from England’s two qualifiers – the best minutes-per-goal ratio in qualifying so far.

Bulgaria have not qualified for major international tournament since 2004.

Tyrone Mings, Mason Mount and James Maddison are all in line for their international debuts.

2019-09-07T15:30:51.010Z

Last time out

  England cruised past Bulgaria in their last Wembley meeting with Jermain Defoe netting a hat-trick in a 4-0 win in a Euro 2012 qualifier.

  2019-09-07T15:54:21.346Z

Gareth Southgate has been speaking to ITV, explaining his decision to pick Kieran Trippier over Trent Alexander Arnold.

  “He has had a very good start to season. Last year was difficult for him but he’s got a new lease of life under Diego Simeone with a new challenge and he’s flourishing.“

KICK OFF

2019-09-07T16:00:22.153Z

And we are underway at Wembley!

2019-09-07T16:03:03.580Z

2 mins | Sterling wins a corner early on, scampering down the inside right after Kane’s clever run inside left space for him. 

  Bulgaria fail to clear the corner, prompting Rashford to lash one on goal but his effort is blocked. 

2019-09-07T16:08:10.846Z

5 mins | England are already pressing hard… but Pickford is forced into the first save of the game when the visitors open up space down the left with Wanderson picked out in the middle.

  He scuffs his shot slightly, making things comfortable for Pickford, but it’s an early scare. 

2019-09-07T16:11:33.303Z

7 mins | Maguire is forced to get across and head away a Bulgaria corner. The visitors have started confidently here. 

2019-09-07T16:12:18.586Z

9 mins | Barkley plays a delightful through ball to find Rose’s run down the left – but a poor first touch lets him down and allows Bulgaria to regroup defensively. 

2019-09-07T16:15:42.950Z

14 mins | What an effort! Michael Keane spreads the play, picking out Rose who pings a first time cross back over to Henderson, racing in on the edge of the box. He hits it first time, smashing a very decent shot wide of the post. 

2019-09-07T16:19:31.776Z

18 mins | Harry Kane slots home! But he is offside. 

  Barkley spreads play superbly again, freeing Sterling down the inside right. The Man City man slides a perfect ball over to Kane but he has gone too soon and the offside flag is up.

2019-09-07T16:26:27.593Z

22 mins | Rashford gets the ball 30 yards out, has a look around for a pass, decides against it and looks for goal. His effort sails wide. 

GOAL!

2019-09-07T16:26:35.953Z

GOAL! England 1-0 Bulgaria | Harry Kane, 23 mins 

  Can’t see the England vs Bulgaria LIVE: Euro 2020 qualifying blog? Click here for the desktop version.

Team news and line-ups

Gareth Southgate did not experiment with his England team as Kieran Trippier earned a recall.

The Atletico Madrid right-back, who left Tottenham in the close season, was handed a start, having been dropped for the summer’s Nations League finals.

Manchester United midfielder Jesse Lingard is the only notable absentee as he has left the squad due to illness and will play no part in Tuesday’s game with Kosovo.

England XI: Pickford; Trippier, Keane, Maguire, Rose; Henderson, Rice, Barkley; Sterling, Rashford, Kane

Subs: Heaton, Pope, Alexander-Arnold, Chilwell, Gomez, Mings, Winks, Mount, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Maddison, Sancho, Wilson

Bulgaria XI: I liev, S. Popov, Bodurov, Bozhikov, Nedyalkov, Sarmov, Ivanov, I. Popov, Malinov, Wanderson, Marcelino

Subs: Slavchev, Pashov, Goranov, Daniel Mladenov, Terziev, Lukov, Kristian Dimitrov, Nikolay Dimitrov, Hristo Ivanov, Milanov, Despodov, Kraev.

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[paranoid-fighter]

Snippit from a story

Just a little section of a rough draft from something I’m writing for @slunkymcgee - in this scene, Geoff’s giving relationship advice to his adopted niece, Reina: 

"Why doesn't he just know I like him? I thought I was being obvious." "Obvious means different things to different people." Geoff chuckled. "I mean, I thought I was being obvious with how I felt about Vincent before we started dating. Turns out the only thing that was actually obvious was that I was so stupidly in love with him and I had no idea how to show it." "So did you end up telling him how you felt?" She asked as she pulled a fluffy pillow into her arms and hugged it to her chest. "Eventually, yeah. I actually said it after he told me he loved me." Geoff laughed. "It was pretty funny. I can't really remember much of what lead up to it, but I remember the conversation.” Geoff leaned back on the couch. “He held my head between his hands, kissed my forehead and asked me if I knew that he loved me. My brain short circuited for a bit and I just stared at him. I then asked him if he really did love me, to which he just kissed my forehead again, called me a beautiful idiot, and then told me that he did love me." Geoff smiled softly as he took another bite of ice cream. "It just further proves my point. Men are stupid, Reina. Even moreso when they're in love."

[epchapman89]

Direct Trade In The Shadows

In the first entry in this series, author Michaele Weissman explored the promise and problems associated with Direct Trade, the ethical sourcing model for specialty coffee in which producers and roasting work as partners. In her research—for this series and for her book, God In A Cup—more questions were raised than answered. The exploration continues.

“If you want to see Direct Trade in action look no further than your local Whole Foods or specialty grocery,” says Matt Lounsbury, Stumptown’s former veteran vice president. “Everyone in the industry is promoting coffee farmers and putting reference to farms and farmers on their packages. And if they are not, they had better start.” (Lounsbury recently left Stumptown; his departure was amicable.)

It’s hard to dispute that customers find stories about coffee farmers uplifting. But is the uplift justified? Is the wealth generated by Direct Trade shared and are lives being changed at origin? These questions have dogged Direct Trade since its inception. Today, as the high-end coffee industry grows and consolidates, new questions emerge.

When we refer to Direct Trade, are we still talking about small roasting companies partnering with small farmers? What about large roasters? Is it Direct Trade when a behemoth specialty roaster negotiates with a coffee smallholder?

Answering these questions requires a nitty gritty examination at how Direct Trade operates, not in theory but in practice. That’s the task I set for myself in this, the second installment of my series, “Is Direct Trade Fair?” for Sprudge Media Network.

The Microlots

First, a definition. Direct Trade coffees are NOT beans with high cupping scores from outstanding regions such as Yirgacheffe in Ethiopia or Guatemala’s Huehuetenango. A coffee company with cool branding is not automatically Direct Trade. Skyping with the farmer doesn’t make your coffee DT.

Direct Trade is a sales practice related to the growing, selling, and buying of microlots–small amounts of coffee grown with an unusual attention to detail on pinpricks of land. Microlots grow on terroir that is comparable to a neighborhood, not a zip code. A microlot might come from, for example, one half hectare of land on a south-facing hillside, at 1817 meters elevation, protected from extreme winds and weather by a canopy of tall trees or a rocky outcropping.

Beans from microlots are strictly segregated–the technical term is disaggregated–when picked, processed, bagged, and shipped. Microlots are small, maybe 5 or 10 bags of coffee, with the most prized of these lots clocking in with cupping scores of 88 and above. And they are expensive. Four to five dollars a pound is more or less standard for the best lots, and prices often rise higher than that.

The Direct Trade label can also apply to single-origin coffees. Single-origin refers to disaggregated beans grown in somewhat larger areas of a single farm or possibly several farms. A single-origin may produce as much as 50 or even 100 bags of unusually high-quality coffee. These beans, too, are often the product of Direct Trade or quasi-Direct Trade relationships and may also earn impressive quality premiums when cupped.

Tim Hill, Counter Culture Coffee’s quality director and head buyer, says the practice of designating and segregating microlots was a game changer for the specialty industry when it emerged a dozen years ago. “Sellers and buyers working in partnership pushed specialty into a realm that no one had imagined possible in terms of scarcity, flavor, quality, and value.”

Hill credits early collaboration among the industry’s most influential buyers—including Counter Culture’s Peter Giuliano, now with SCA; Intelligentsia’s Geoff Watts; and Stumptown founder Duane Sorenson, now a restaurateur–with nurturing this revolution into existence. “They rewrote the rules of the specialty game,” says Hill. “I don’t think any one of our companies alone could have brought about this new system.”

What Hill describes is a win for roasters, and for coffee lovers, but it is not automatically a win for producers. The extra costs associated with growing a few bags or a few dozen bags of super high-quality coffee do not always pay off. This is the finding of Hannah Popish of Catholic Relief Services, whose case study for Counter Culture titled “The Social Impact of Microlots” explores what it takes to make Direct Trade profitable for growers. “The decision to pursue microlots… has to be made independently by smallholder farmers and their organizations on a case-by-case basis,” Popish wrote in her report. In order to do so, farmers need to undertake what she describes as an “inventory of assets,” determining if they have what it takes to be “conducive to successful microlot production and marketing.”

Among the assets Popish lists: well-situated land, water, labor, access to financing, “hardware” up to and including the farmer’s own wet mill, software such as communications, transportation, and roads. As a takeaway Popish suggests that roasters interested in developing direct relationships with farmers help them determine ahead of time if they have the necessary “assets”.

The Sellers

So why bother? If you are a grower, why make the expensive effort to develop relationships with specialty buyers and jump through all their hoops? Your coffee might not make the grade. And if it does win the jackpot one year, it may not perform so well the next (this story is sadly common among Cup of Excellence winners). Isn’t there a better way?

The question presumes that farmers have choices. “Direct Trade is the worst system for buying (or selling) green coffee…except for all the others,” says Michael Sheridan. Today he’s the Director of Sourcing at Intelligentsia, but in a previous role he oversaw Catholic Relief Services’ path-breaking Borderlands research project, studying the impact of Direct Trade on farmers in Colombia.

Sheridan’s quote doesn’t pull any punches—nothing about this process is easy. Yet despite the uncertainty and added labor associated with Direct Trade, many coffee producers have embraced the challenge. Take Maria Elena de Botto, co-owner of Finca Nombre de Dios in the northwest Alotepec-Metapan region of El Salvador (she wears a second hat as “presidente” of El Salvador’s Alianza de Mujeres en Café). Botto has no doubts about this interactive way of selling coffee.

Direct Trade, she believes, is a lot more than a sales model—it’s a top to bottom reorientation that opened her eyes to coffee’s potential. “It taught me what coffee was and what I could do with it,” Botto recalls. “If you just hand your cherry over to someone else for wet milling and drying and selling—that’s how the C-market operates. If you make the additional effort to wet mill and dry mill the way your buyers want, that’s Direct Trade.” Without the innovations promoted by Direct Trade “coffee farming in my region would not be sustainable,” she says.

Her enthusiasm is only secondarily about the promise of greater earnings. In her view, the most important issue is price stability. Direct Trade frees farmers from the commodities market where coffee prices peaked in 2012 at $3.00 a pound and then fell to around $1.40 a pound in early 2017—a baffling free fall that coincides with the fast rising global demand for specialty coffee on the consumer end of the supply chain.

Direct Trade has transformed Botto and those like her: Previously they were resource extractors in a commodities chain. Now they are entrepreneurs and artisans.

Botto first encountered ideas about selling and buying direct at El Salvador’s Cup of Excellence competition in 2003. Drawn by the country’s abundance of washed Bourbons, Pacamaras and other high-quality Arabicas, COE chose El Salvador as the site of one of its first Central American competitions. Following the competition, Geoff Watts and Peter Giuliano remained in El Salvador to conduct a series of introductory lectures familiarizing Salvadoran growers with the basics of cupping and roasting. That was the first of many visits by roasters from around the world.

Until then even educated growers—Botto has a degree in marketing from Universidad Jose Simeon Canas—knew little about their crop and less about the taste preferences of buyers. This is not unusual. Coffee growers in many parts of the world traditionally do not drink coffee—tea, for example, is the preferred drink in much of Kenya, a holdover from its colonial history. If they do drink coffee, oftentimes it’s the low-quality stuff international buyers reject, hence their unfamiliarity with coffee’s potential. (This generality is fast changing, with many producing countries developing their domestic coffee sectors and cities like San Salvador, Nairobi, Bogota, and others hosting lively coffee scenes.)

Botto believes Direct Trade’s focus on building relationships and its principle of, as she says, “incentivizing quality,” saved the day in 2012 when catastrophe struck. A devastating outbreak of coffee leaf rust exacerbated by hotter, wetter weather wrought by climate change swept through her region, cutting production in half.

The dual promise of a stable marketplace and high prices for high-quality beans gave farmers a reason to rebuild, she says. As part of a program funded by the US Department of Agriculture, they ripped out diseased trees, planted new disease resistant varieties and adopted agricultural practices that help coffee plants withstand extreme weather. Other improvements were made as well. Botto, for example, bought a wet mill and she now does the milling for her own farm and for some of her neighbors. Then she applied for and was granted a license to export, and this, too, benefited her and her neighbors.

“Quality is profitable even with greater costs,” Botto insists, noting that the promise of Direct Trade has encouraged many young people, including two of her sons, to study agronomy with the intention of returning to their families’ farms to grow coffee. Other forward-looking growers interviewed for this article also described making improvements and adopting strategies benefitting themselves and their communities.

Growers in other parts of South and Central America share Botto’s enthusiasm for Direct Trade. Among them: Felipe Croce, whose family farm, Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza, in the Mococca region of Brazil produces highly ranked organic coffees, many of them naturally processed that it sells via Direct Trade to several thousand buyers worldwide. On its website, Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza describes itself as “a farm, a network of farmers, a center of coffee studies, and an export company that mills and ships coffee worldwide.” Croce credits Direct Trade with making his family’s farm profitable enough to sustain a vertically integrated operation in which nearly 100 nearby farms now participate, with more eager to join. His goal in Brazil is the same as Maria Botto’s in El Salvador: growth that expands outward to benefit an entire region’s agricultural sector.

Direct Trade programs, at their best, have a multiplier effect. Improving incomes and outlooks encourages farmers to take pride in what they do. That, in turn, encourages a new generation to reconsider coffee farming as a life’s work. “Most of the farmers I work with are my age, 29,” Croce says. “Their children are proud of their parents. I think a lot of farmers were embarrassed, but now roasters from around the world are coming to visit them.”

Meanwhile in Panama, Wilford Lamastus—whose family owns the famed Elida Estate in Boquete—tells a similar story. Panama is an unusual case study in Direct Trade, due to its small size, advanced infrastructure, and international fame brought about by the Geisha/Gesha cultivar, first pioneered by the Peterson family at Hacienda Esmeralda. And yet, the Boquete region is home to the Ngobe-Bugle indigenous peoples, who live in the remote highlands and work as pickers, and are among the poorest farm laborers in the world. Lamastus says the prosperity generated by Direct Trade is rewriting the story of laborers on his farm and throughout the Boquete region. (I spoke at length about the Ngobe-Bugle peoples with third-generation Boquete coffee farmer Maria Ruiz of Boquete, in researching the Panama chapters of God In A Cup). Lamastus and his neighbors are now able to pay better wages and provide better housing, they are building schools and clinics, hiring teachers, and providing a raft of services not provided by the government that address intergenerational poverty.

“Because of Direct Trade, some of the Ngobe-Bugle are learning to cup,” says Lamastus. “Some are learning to roast, to operate dryers, and now they have health insurance and a permanent job. They live in Boquete and their kids are going to school. Some study English and learn how to work computers. Direct Trade has changed the future of these people.”

Beyond Latin America

Outside the Western Hemisphere, upbeat stories about Direct Trade are harder to find, and more nuanced. Where infrastructure and transportation systems are wanting, maintaining high standards is difficult.

Rwanda is somewhat anomalous because the specialty sector there goes back more than a dozen years. In 2004, a US AID-funded project helped hundreds of thousands of Rwanda farmers owning as few as 200 coffee trees upgrade their agronomic practices and processing protocols. Mitigating extreme poverty in rural areas, it was hoped, would have a positive impact on political stability. The experiment was an apparent success: stability in Rwanda has prevailed and the quality of Rwandan coffee soared. Specialty buyers from the US, Europe, and Asia were induced to travel to Rwanda in search of growers with whom to partner. There was, however, a disconnect, as virtually all farmers in Rwanda are members of growers’ groups and cooperatives. Small roasters found these entities a challenge.

Enter Gilbert Gatali, a Rwandan-born coffee professional whose family fled to Toronto following the genocide in the 1990s. Gatali, a Sprudgie Award winner in 2012 for Notable Producer, is today the CEO of Roots Imizi Ltd, operating a chain of coffee shops across this small country. “Direct Trade is a positive development that has improved the outlook for Rwandan farmers in several different ways,” he tells me.

As with farmers in Central America, Direct Trade benefits in Rwanda began with education. Gatali, who worked for more than 10 years with the exporter KZ Noir and the influential Rwandan producers group Rwashoscco, describes coffee farmers in Rwanda as “hungry for knowledge”, from the field to the mill to the cupping lab. Given their poverty, one of the central tenets of Direct Trade—that “roasters were willing to pay whatever price was warranted for better coffee”—was almost beyond their ken. But beyond financials, engagement with buyers has another benefit for farmers in Rwanda. “The sense of self-respect farmers felt when they realized that buyers in the US, Europe, and Asia were telling a positive story about coffee in Rwanda cannot be understated,” says Gatali.

Still, Direct Trade’s positives were sometimes more apparent than real. Some buyers simply didn’t get the challenges farmers faced. He cites the example of the roaster who spent four or five days touring farms with him and then ordered five bags of coffee. Or the roaster who worked with a farm group to produce 100 bags of coffee for Direct Trade who at harvest time bought 30 bags, representing the cream of the crop.  That left the coop with 70 bags to sell that were rejected by other buyers who might have taken all 100 bags.

“With larger roasters there are problems too. There is a lot of demand for excellence, but the rejection rate is much higher,” Gatali says. “A Direct Trade coffee may leave the warehouse in Kigali in tiptop shape but a lot can happen in transit that is beyond the producer’s control,” he explains. “A guy in Mombasa can ruin a shipment of coffee packed in hermetically sealed Grainpro bags with just a slip of the loading hook.” If the coffee is damaged or degraded when it arrives in Oakland, depending on the nature of the contract, the seller, not the buyer eats the cost.

But Gatali doesn’t see all this as an indictment of Direct Trade. The takeaway for him is the gap between the worldview of growers and buyers and the understanding that problems outside farmers’ control—infrastructure especially—can undermine efforts to use Direct Trade to hoist their communities out of poverty.

The Buyers

Recognizing the difficulty of cultivating Direct Trade relationships in Africa and Asia, many specialty buyers stay away. Others go in with unreasonable expectations that lead them to give up. Counter Culture’s Tim Hill, working in Kenya, is trying to short circuit that cycle of defeat. For the past two and a half years, he has been working intensively with farmers in the Kamavindi region of Kenya to upgrade their agricultural practices, improve quality, and regularize the supply chain in hopes of avoiding some of the problems that Gilbert Gatali described in Rwanda. Most hopeful, he says, is “the desire of farmers to learn from other farmers.”

Jeff Taylor of PT’s Coffee in Topeka, Kansas and San Diego, California, takes a more classical approach. He sells nearly 400,000 pounds of coffee a year, 80 percent of which is labeled Direct Trade. Up to now, Taylor, whose company bought San Diego’s Bird Rock Coffee in early 2017, has exemplified DT as it was originally conceived.

“Our standards are pretty much what Geoff Watts spelled out a dozen years ago,” says Taylor. “I buy from producers who are passionate about coffee. I consider most of them to be my friends. We’ve worked together for years,” he says. None of the farmers he works with are desperately poor, according to Taylor. He considers this uniformity a shortcoming, but understands having stability ensures consistency and makes doing business easier. He negotiates price face to face, paying at a minimum 25 percent above Fair Trade or the C-market, although “we generally pay twice that.” For Taylor and his partner Fred Polzin, coffee has been a calling first and a business second. “It was more important to both of us to succeed on our terms. This was a labor of love, not money.”

It’s an admirable position, but as the number of high-quality specialty coffee roasters increases, attitudes like theirs are less common. Many younger roasters cannot afford to preference their passion for coffee over an awareness of the bottom line.

Back in 2009 when Wille Yli-Luoma, the straight-talking co-owner of Heart Coffee in Portland, Oregon, was getting started, he recalls being “slightly jealous of big companies that had pictures of farms on their bags and Direct Trade stories to tell.” After buying his first Direct Trade coffee, he realized what he’d done, to a large extent, was buy himself a sales pitch because, in fact, equally great coffees were available from traditional channels.

Yli-Luoma hasn’t given up on Direct Trade. He likes building relationships with farmers—“that’s the biggest benefit,” he tells me—and he enjoys “buying nice lots that a lot of energy is being put into.”

Problem is, the way he sees it, Direct Trade as it now plays out often favors larger roasters. Though growing, Heart bought some 250,000 pounds of coffee in 2016, a tiny fraction compared to larger specialty brands. He explains: “Say we find some new coffee and we work with the farmer to develop it,” a process that may entail being in near daily contact with the grower. If the coffee cups well and everyone wants it, larger roasters who can absorb more volume may scoop up the entire supply, cutting off Heart’s access to the very microlot Yli-Luoma helped nurture into existence. He doesn’t blame the farmer when this happens—“the farmer knows he isn’t going to make all his money on me”—but the power of pragmatism to console is limited. It must be enormously frustrating to invest time and money into a project, only to see your best efforts swooped up by monied interlopers.

Yli-Luomo hasn’t given up on Direct Trade, but feels that the system is getting “trickier and trickier.” It’s possible, he concedes, for farmers to earn $4 maybe $5 a pound for their most spectacular microlots. But ironically, the very success of specialty and Direct Trade—success that has led to the industry’s growth and consolidation—is threatening the higher prices farmers earn. That’s because, according to Yli-Luomo, when large specialty roasters show up at a farm able to buy a huge amount of coffee –including the best lots–the roaster “holds the quantity card,” and can force growers’ prices down.

“This is still Direct Trade,” he notes ruefully. Call it Direct Trade in the Shadows , perhaps—the shaded details of how deals get done, long before the coffee touches your lips. And then Yli-Luoma told me something really surprising: “Honestly, I think buying through importers may be the way to go for this industry.”

The Importers

Back in the first splash of Third Wave coffee—around a decade ago, when I was researching God In A Cup—influential buyers, only half in jest, spoke of importers as “blood-sucking middlemen.” In their view, the fees middlemen charged robbed farmers of their hard-won earnings. Such posturing was disingenuous. In the specialty coffee business then and now, no legitimate buyer goes it alone. Unless you as a roaster are smuggling green coffee from the farm out of the country in your backpack, your Direct Trade program is not, in fact, entirely direct.

Standing in the middle between farmers and roasters are the importers, who, when doing their job well, absorb some of the pressures crushing both sides. In tandem with carefully chosen exporters, importers create the supply chain ensuring that microlots are properly separated, processed, labeled, shipped, stored in warehouses, and shipped to roasters, sometimes in bulk, but more often, a few bags at a time. At origin, roasters rely on importers’ knowledge of coffee, their webs of global relationships, and their financial, technical, and bureaucratic know-how.

All this explains why Dan Streetman, the Relationship Buyer at Irving Farm Coffee Roasters, says his first act after being hired was to reach out to his importer. That was in 2011. “My directive was to travel to origin and buy coffees that would change how we tell our story,” Streetman says. “To develop relationships with farmers, I realized I would have to work backwards. I called our importer and said I am looking for coffees with these characteristics. I am going to buy this amount. I am going to travel, and I want to cup coffees and meet producers.” His importer made the introductions and six years later, Streetman, whose company sells half a million pounds of coffee a year is still buying from some of these producers.

On the grower side of the equation, the single most important service provided by importers is financial. Importers do what small and medium-sized boutique roasters can rarely do: provide farmers with pre-financing to buy seed and fertilizer, pay pickers, and underwrite other expenses incurred prior to harvest. “Most coffee farmers are poor,” says Café Imports VP of Sales Noah Namowicz, who spoke to me at length for this feature series. “Believe me, we had to fight our bank to do this,” he explains. “Borrowing money to give to a coffee farmer in Colombia whose whole crop can get wiped out in a hailstorm is not something money people want you to do.”

A new generation of importers has emerged to serve the thousands of small and medium-sized specialty roasters making their mark today. These importers look, dress, and think like their customers. Among them, Minneapolis-based Café Imports; Seattle’s Atlas Coffee; Oakland’s Red Fox Coffee Merchants, co-founded by former Stumptown green buyer Aleco Chigounis (who declined to be interviewed for this series); Genuine Origin, the boutique division of the global trading company Volcafe; Coffee Shrub, the influential small-format green coffee purveyor owned by Thompson Owen of Sweet Maria’s; and Royal Coffee, whose newly launched Crown Jewels program separates out high-rated microlots for customers looking to buy small lots of green coffee.

There is another, often overlooked dimension to the importer’s role. By absorbing large amounts of coffee, these quality-focused importers ensure the financial viability of the specialty market and Direct Trade. Microlots are expensive to grow, but when volume increases, costs are amortized. Cafe Imports bought 19 million pounds of specialty coffee in 2015, enough to tip the scale in favor of specialty. As Namowicz explained, “When we work with a farm, we feel an obligation to buy everything that we can find a home for.” Only the largest (consolidated) roasters can approach this.

You might say Café Imports and other importers help level the playing field by absorbing risk while enabling small and medium-sized roasters to push quality coffee into all corners of the world. “I pour a ton of time and money into developing infrastructure to benefit farmers,” Namowicz continues. “When a roaster buys thirty bags from me, the purchase is part of a larger structure benefiting the producer.” When looked at closely this importer-funded structure, plus the quality premium Café Imports and others pay for the highest-rated microlots, lines start to blur, and the importers’ work begins to resemble Direct Trade.

If it looks like Direct Trade, and cups like Direct Trade, well…perhaps Wille Yli-Luoma is right, and the role these importers play will be integral to the future of the Direct Trade business model. If that role has been overshadowed, well, perhaps it’s time we bring it out of the shadows and into the light.

To get there we need transparency, which is one focus of my third and final installment of this series. Join us again in late April for the conclusion.

Michaele Weissman is a special correspondent to Sprudge Media Network. Weissman is the author of God In A Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee, published in 2008 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and a freelance journalist writing for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and many more. Read more Michaele Weissman on Sprudge.

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[paranoid-fighter]

33 senpaaaaaaai :o

33: “Did anyone ever tell you how pathetic you are? It’s incredible how low my standards are for you.”

Behold! A half hour drabble, featuring Vincent and the god that owns Vincent’s soul (spoilers, sorry). 

He stared down his nose at the bloodied pile of flesh that had once been an elf named Vincent. “Did anyone ever tell you how pathetic you are?” Syphryn sneered. “It is incredible how low my standards are for you.” He kicked at the quivering lump of mortality. “They fall further and further with every passing day.” Another kick, followed by a low whine of pain. “I had such hope for you, you know. I have trained you personally for decades, making sure that you were going to be the very best. You have become quite skilled, but it seems that the more training you receive, the fewer brain cells you have.”

Vincent coughed as his hand tightened around the grip of his pistol. “Stop hitting my head.”“A joke! Even now, a breath away from death, you make jokes!” Syphryn balked. “Truly, you have no sense.”“You won’t let me die.” It was as much a statement as it was a complaint.

Syphryn paused at that. His crimson eyes fixed on Vincent’s broken body. “What was that I heard?”Vincent looked away, snarling as he slowly pushed himself upright.“It almost sounded like you are angry. Do you no longer enjoy your eternal youth? You seemed so desperate to keep it when we first met.”No response.“You should know by now that I will never let you go. I own you, Vincent.”“My soul.”“What?”“You own my soul. Not me. I’m not yours.” “And what is a man without his soul? Just a body.”“Free will. Still,” he spat out a mouthful of blood and a tooth, “have it.”“Free will, he says as he kneels at the feet of Death.”“You’re not Death.”

Amused, Syphryn watched as Vincent struggled to his feet. “If I am not Death, then what am I?”Another cough. “Toga wearing fucker.”“I should strike you down for that.” “You won’t.” Vincent swayed as he stood upright, his hand still clenching his pistol. “Won’t… kill me. Too valuable.”

Syphryn’s amused smirk faded. “And why do you think you are valuable to me?”“Not a vampire,” he ignored the trickle of blood that was stinging his eye, “still alive. Still mortal.”“You would and will be more valuable to me as a vampire.”“Liar.”

“You are becoming exceptionally presumptuous and arrogant, telling a god that he is a liar.”“Divinity means nothing.” Vincent stood a little straighter. “You’re still a man.”“I still hold your soul in my hand.” He forced his voice to remain calm; he did not want to give Vincent the satisfaction of knowing the elf had wormed his way under his skin.Vincent licked the blood from his lips. “For all the good it does you. Can’t keep me under control.”“Do you want to die, Vincent? Because you are speaking like you want me to kill you.”“Then do it.” Vincent slowly raised his gun. “Do it.” He brought the gun up to his own temple. “Or I will.”

Keeping his stoic facade in place, Syphryn met Vincent’s gaze. “What do you think you will accomplish by taking your own life?”“If I die, then I won’t be able to kill you.”

Syphryn’s red wings fluttered in annoyance. “And you think you can kill me?”“Not yet, but I can. And I will.” He held the gun steady. “I’ve seen it. And you have, too. We’ll fight. I’ll win. You’ll give me back my soul. And then I kill you.” “You? Killing a god? Killing me? You are delusional.”Vincent’s finger tightened on the trigger as he held Syphryn’s stare–

The gun clattered to the ground at Vincent’s feet.

Syphryn lowered his hand as his handsome face cortorted into a scowl. “You insufferable bastard.”Vincent gave a ghost of a smile.“Why are you doing this?”“Love.”“What?” Vincent looked down at the two rings on his finger. “I want to see him again. I can’t do that if you have my soul.”

“I see.” Syphryn turned on his heel. “Leave, Vincent. This is not over yet.” He paused and looked over his shoulder. “Also, do not make me have to intervene like that again. Because I will not. And then you will never be able to see him again.”

Vincent watched as the god vanished in a swirl of smoke and red feathers. He smirked as he slowly lowered himself back to the ground, stretching out his arms and legs as his eyes closed. “Be proud, Geoff,” he whispered to the air, “I’m fighting a god. And I’m winning.”

[paranoid-fighter]

Original Fiction - Teaser: Meet Vincent

After an unwanted hiatus, have some of the introduction of Vincent into the Geoff story: 

Vincent watched through the small window as Geoff sped out of the parking lot and was somewhat surprised that he didn't hear the sounds of squealing tires. He let out a long sigh before picking up their glasses and downing the rest of Geoff's beer in two swallows. This scenario wasn't anything new, really; every time he and Geoff came close to having an intimate moment, Geoff would run away.

That's how it had been for the past two years and he didn't see it changing any time soon.

He pulled his gaze away from the door and stared down at his own glass. He didn't need a refill, but he didn't feel like sitting in the back of the brewery and drinking alone. He tried to push his frustrations aside as he made his way to the bar and settled himself down on a stool at the far corner before taking another long drink.

The moment his empty glass hit the counter top, Zelig skipped over to Vincent. "Another stout?" The bartender asked as he took the glass and placed it with the others that were waiting to be washed.

Vincent waved his hand. "I will pass; I finished off Geoff's beer."

"Damn; he didn't even finish it?"

He shook his head. "He panicked. Again."

"...explains why I saw him running." Zelig nodded, solemnly. "Well, then; any idea what you're going to do about that?"

He shook his head again. "I cannot think of any more signals to give him. It is not in my nature to fall over myself for someone, but if I were trying any harder, I fear I would, quite literally, fall on him."

"Have you considered trying it? Might work." He grinned as Vincent fixed him with a dry stare. "Fine; be that way." Zelig crossed his arms and lowered his head in thought. He rubbed his chin for a moment before snapping his fingers. "Got it. Since you won't face-plant on him, I'll signal him." He picked up two rags from under the counter and held them aloft with outstretched arms. "I mean, I don't know the proper signals or anything, but I'm sure I could figure something out!" His smile grew as he waved the rags around.

Vincent, despite himself, laughed. "How about this: if he does not kiss me within the next year, you can try signaling, alright?"

"Sounds good. Gives me time to practice, too." Zelig lowered the rags as he glanced at the rest of the bar. "You need anything before I get back to work?"

"Actually, yes. Another stout would be lovely. And the check, too, please."

"You got it, bossman."

"I told you not to call me that."

"Alrighty, Hank." Zelig winked before walking away.

Vincent's smile lasted through the next stout and through paying for the drinks. He didn't comment that the count on the receipt wasn't accurate, chalking it up to the fact Geoff had arranged the whole cold room for the bartender - surely that was worth a pint or two, he mused as he signed his name with a flourish.

Catching Zelig's eye, he slid the receipt across the bar and tapped two fingers to his brow in faux salute, a gesture mirrored by the bartender. He stood up from his stool and made his way through the diverse crowd of construction workers and suburban families, musing, as he always did, that the bow-tie wearing bartender simply couldn't be any more out of place than if he tried.

And yet, he glanced over his shoulder as he opened the door, the eccentric and outdated bartender was just another part of the oddity that was Five Birds Brewing. The wayward and occasionally chaotic brewery always managed to be a place for people to find refuge, even if they didn't know they needed it.

Geoff had certainly found refuge here, years ago. And, recently, Vincent had, too.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, he made his way through the parking lot. He couldn't lose himself to sentimentality now, not when he had to go and see Jean-Claude. The vampire would be able to smell it on him like a cheap cologne and the last thing he needed was for Jean-Claude to start talking about the past. Combined with the mounting frustrations caused by Geoff (or, rather, the frustrations caused by therelackof), Vincent didn't fully trust the persuasive vampire - or himself.

Especially if Jean-Claude did that thing with his tongue that still eluded his comprehension, well over half a century later.

This wasn't to say, though, that he was ready to cast the werewolf aside - quite the contrary, in fact. He had feelings for Geoff and, on some days, he had too many. The thought made him frown as he made his way through the packed parking lot. He liked Geoff a great deal and, dare he even think it, he might actually be in love with him. He couldn't know that second part for certain, though, considering they still hadn't shared a kiss. And, at the rate Geoff was going, Vincent had a feeling they would somehow end up moving in together, adopting a pack of dogs, growing a rose garden and aging a few decades before Geoff asked Vincent to be his boyfriend.

They might even share a kiss then.

Vincent would accept Geoff's offer before respond in kind, of course, and would merely regard the passing years with the same amount of interest one to gives a pigeon bobbing its way through a crowd.

His blaise attitude wasn't for a lack of love, no. It was just that time just meant very little to an elf.

Especially to an elf that had died seventy-one years ago...

...well, he conceded, had mostly died seventy-one years ago, or something like that; he wasn't completely dead yet and that was the important part. He still didn't understand what had happened, but Scylla could, had and would continue to explain it, he thought as he came to stand by his car. His sister always had a knack for knowing about things that were less than fully alive.

"I should tell you to be careful with Geoff; he still has a pulse," he mumbled as he stared down at his reflection, at the tie that Geoff had sworn he was trying to adjust. He did believe that Geoff had been adjusting his tie - if adjusting meant trying to remove it entirely.

Vincent quickly fixed the skewed knot before he smoothed out his ponytail that Geoff had been attempting to fix. He had a feeling that Geoff's motive had been to see the long hair hanging freely. It was the only explanation he could think of for why Geoff had almost broken the elastic band holding his hair in place.

With his tie and hair fixed, Vincent gave himself one more look-over before rolling his neck and shoulders with a long exhale as he closed his eyes. He stayed there for a moment, inhaling slowly as he opened his eyes. He met his reflection's gaze, at the grey eyes that had softened, at the posture that had lost its rigidity. It was a small change, really, and were just two of the many things that would differentiate Geoff's dear Vincent Anders from Vincent Antares.

The real change between the two Vincents would be seen in his speech and tone of voice; Vincent Antares had hardly any of the posh accent of Mr. Anders - despite Jean-Claude's constant - and occasionally brutal - tutelage.

[paranoid-fighter]

Original Fiction: Chapter 10: “You’re not pretty!”

Alternatively titled as: the love interest has FINALLY been introduced!

"...home?"

Geoff raised his head, blinking owlishly as Griffith came to stand in front of his desk. "What?" "I asked if you were going to go home," the analyst smiled, "it's almost six, you know." "What?" "I said--" "It's almost six? Shit!" Geoff saved his work and put his laptop into sleep mode before jumping to his feet. "Shit! I'm gonna be late," he all but moaned as he scrambled for his keys and wallet, "shit, gonna be late. Shit...!" "Geoff--" Griffith could only stare as Geoff sprinted out of the room, listening to the Doppler effect of profanity that Geoff left in his wake...

The officer hurried through both the precinct and the parking lot as he fumbled for his keys. He hastily unlocked the driver's side door and flung himself into the seat. Cursing under his breath, he listened to the roar of the engine as he resisted the temptation to drive the car as it was meant to be driven. Instead, his car calmly drifted along with the slow flow of traffic while he himself all but frothed at the mouth with impatience...

Geoff's car all but skidded to a halt in his parking spot. He jogged through the parking deck and into the lobby, almost tripping over his feet from his haste. A quick glance at the elevators showed that they were all on the top floor of the building and, despite his frantic jabbing of the buttons, they didn't appear to be moving. Cursing again, he made his way to the stairwell and began the climb up to the top floor, taking the stairs two at a time in an effort to make it to his apartment as quickly as he could.

After the fifth floor, with four more floors remaining, he switched to taking only one stair at a time.

Gasping and sweating, he pulled himself up the last few stairs and dragged himself to his apartment. Geoff had scarcely made it over the threshold before launching his keys and wallet at the bowl by the door and rushing to his bedroom. A trail of clothes were left in his wake, haphazardly discarded as he made his way into the bathroom. He knew he desperately needed a shower and a change of clothes before he went to see Vincent. The last thing he wanted to do was show up in his uniform and risk being covered in bits of corpse; he was fairly confident that he hadn't gotten any pieces of Mr. Doe on him, but he wasn't willing to take that risk.

Especially not with Vincent.

As he waited for the water to warm, he read and reread the most recent texts from Vincent. Even though nothing out of the ordinary had been said, Geoff found himself unable to stop himself from scrolling through the conversation. Each message was another sign that Vincent was finally back. He hadn't realized just how long the month had been, nor had he realized just how much he missed seeing Vincent's smile. It wasn't a pretty smile, not by conventional standards, but his heart would always race whenever he saw that crooked smil--

--what?

He blinked as he looked up from his phone, frowning as he realized that the water had yet to warm up. Sighing, he adjusted the knob and looked back down at his phone as his thoughts resumed wandering...

...and wondering about Vincent.

Vincent, like his smile, wasn't pretty. At least, he wasn't pretty in the way that most elves seemed to be; there were just so many differences between Vincent and the average elf, little differences that kept Vincent from being "pretty."

And Geoff knew almost all of them by heart.

The most obvious difference was that Vincent had a heavier build; he was still a hair more slight than the average human male, but he definitely had a broader frame with far more muscle than most of his kind. Well, Geoff conceded, it at least appeared that way; he had yet to see Vincent in anything other than slacks and a button-down shirt. He could distinctly remember several different occasions where had seen the outline of muscle and could only imagine what other secrets lay behind the starched fabric--

Geoff put his phone on the counter as he frowned at the still-frigid water; it shouldn't take this long to heat up.

--and he found himself all but dying to know what Vincent looked like under those clothes.

Vincent was pale. There was simply no denying it. Even though he had only ever really seen Vincent's face, hands and neck, he could only imagine that Vincent's whole body was that same shade of alabaster. Or maybe, Geoff mused, Vincent wasn't really so pale and that he just looked like it because of his hair - which was another difference Geoff had memorized. Most elves that he had seen almost always wore their hair in some sort of elegant style, be it braids or with elaborate hairpieces that he swore were magic. Vincent, however, never wore his hair in anything other than a simple ponytail that was tied at the base of his neck. It suited Vincent, but Geoff found himself longing to see those locks hanging free. If Vincent's hair was out of that damn ponytail, he'd finally be able to tangle his hands into it and pull Vincent close--

Geoff stepped into the shower.

The icy water pelted him, freezing him to his very core within seconds. His shocked cry reverberated around the bathroom in a pitch that most sopranos could only ever dream of reaching. With his teeth clattering in his head, he tried to scrub himself clean from both the day and the thoughts of Vincent. There was no reason for him to be thinking of Vincent like this - no one thought about their best friend like that, right?

Right, Geoff nodded as he stepped out of the shower and began to dry himself off. It just wasn't right to think about Vincent like that; Vincent was his very best friend and he didn't need to think about how Vincent's grey eyes sparkled when he laughed or about how Vincent's crooked smile was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen--

"Goddammit!" Geoff snarled as he stared down at his erection, half-wondering how it had already recovered from its trip to the Arctic Circle. "I don't have time for this," he said as hurried to dry himself off, all while trying to ignore the growing predicament he found himself in. As loathe as he was to admit it, he wasn't a stranger to this scenario. There had been more than a few times now where his thoughts of Vincent had resulted in him taking matters into his own hands. However, it usually happened at a more convenient time, such as late at night when his thoughts of Vincent kept him awake and made him ever-so-keenly aware of just how large and empty his bed was...

He dressed as quickly as he had showered, pulling on the first things he laid his hands on that weren't lying on the bedroom floor. He scarcely attempted to tame his hair by, more or less, throwing a brush in the general vicinity of his head before rushing out of the bedroom and back to the front door. He pulled on his shoes, stumbling and overbalancing in his haste, before grabbing his keys and wallet... only to double back and grab his phone.

Cursing himself, Geoff ran back to the front door and made his way to the stairwell. He didn't want to take the stairs, but he only had twenty minutes to make the twenty three minute drive out to the brewery and the elevators were now stopped on the first floor. He thundered down flight after flight and out into the parking garage, whereupon he dove into the driver's seat. He took a deep breath and carefully put his keys into the ignition, forcing himself to calm as he backed out of his parking spot. Just like the drive home, he wanted nothing more than to put the pedal to the floor, but he made himself drive like any other law-abiding citizen - one that just so happened to speed ever-so-slightly...

With mere miles to go, Geoff's frantic thoughts began to slow as he stared at the familiar landmarks while inching through traffic. Even though the brewery was just mere minutes away from the busy highway, the atmosphere of Five Birds was as calm and tranquil as the thick trees that surrounded it. Those trees were probably why Vincent enjoyed the brewery, Geoff thought as he stared up at a towering pine - Vincent was happy whenever he was surrounded by greenery.

Geoff's car slowly rolled up to the intersection as his pulse quickened. All he had to do now was make it through this stop light, drive another mile and then he'd be there. Vincent was probably already there, too; it was two minutes past the hour and Geoff had never known Vincent to be late for anything. He had a feeling Vincent might give him grief for being late, but he knew the elf would be smiling that crooked smile--

That smile.

That goddamn smile.

"It's not a pretty smile," he told himself as he stared up at the stoplight, "and he's not pretty. Not at all. He's got a broken nose, his face's half paralyzed, he's broad-shouldered, he's paler than a corpse..." His thumbs tapped the steering wheel. "And I don't think he's pretty. Because he's not. And I don't like things that aren't pretty. I like pretty things--girls. I like pretty girls. Yes." He could hear his blood rushing in his ears as his stomach squirmed.

It was a half truth, but it was a half truth that felt sour on his tongue.

He liked pretty things, yes, but he didn't actually like pretty girls. He didn't even like pretty guys. No, he especially didn't like pretty guys.

He liked--

The light turned green.

Geoff's tires squealed as he sped through the intersection and made his way down the tree-lined street...

With his car parked, Geoff gave himself a quick mental shake before stepping out into the warm night air. It was finally time to see Vincent again. Vincent's month long trip was finally. They were about to have a beer together, maybe a few, and Geoff would get to talk with his best friend again.

He opened the door and stepped inside, only to fall still as he looked around the crowded bar.

There was a suit-clad man sitting at the bar with a long, black ponytail resting over his wool jacket.

He knew that ponytail anywhere.

That pretty ponytail, darker than night and smoother than silk--

"You're not pretty!"

Vincent blinked and stared over his shoulder at Geoff. "What?" "Shit! I said that out loud. Fuck. No. You're not pretty." Geoff swept his hands through his hair as his gaze fell to his feet. "I mean, you're beautiful. You're so goddamn beautiful. Your smile makes my heart pound and my brain go dumb--fuck! Shut up!" Geoff let out a frustrated whimper as he stared at his feet. "I mean--" "Do you want to start over?" Vincent asked kindly as he sipped his beer. "Please," Geoff whined. "Alright. Take your time; start again whenever you are ready." Vincent turned away as he motioned for the bartender to pour Geoff a drink.

Geoff took a few steps away and, after several deep breaths, walked back up to the elf. "Hey, Vince! Long time, no see. How was your trip?" Grinning his crooked grin, Vincent turned on his stool to face Geoff. "It was--" "Holy shit, you're /not/ pretty!" He breathed as he stared at the spectacular bruises covering half of Vincent's face. "What the fuck happened? Are you okay?" He raised a hand as if to touch the elf's face, but quickly shoved his hand into his pocket.

"Nice to see you, too. My trip went well, for the most part." Vincent took the second beer from the bartender and placed it in front of the empty stool beside him. He hid his smile as Geoff sat down next to him. "As for what happened, this is the result of a very skittish horse being taken on its first fox hunt." "What?" Geoff frowned as he sipped his beer - a honey wheat, brewed with local honey. "A fox hunt? You went on a fox hunt?" "The plan had been for me to attend, yes, but I found myself sitting in the first aid station instead." "Why were you going on a fox hunt? Where were you?" "I was in England. As for the fox hunt," he sipped his porter, "it was part of a client's attempt to win me over. It did not work." "Why? Was it because of the fox hunt?" "Oh, no, not at all. Well, maybe a little," Vincent smiled into his beer. "The truth is that the company was severely lacking in security controls and seemed to only operate on good hope. They did not make for a promising investment." "How'd you figure that out?" "Through what I can only describe as a month-long audit." "And a fox hunt." Geoff grinned. "...and a fox hunt," Vincent agreed as he sipped his beer. "And, I must say, the fox hunt was the best part of the entire trip. The owners of the company were quite trying." He sighed and shook his head before looking back to Geoff. "How have you been? How have the past few weeks treated you?"

Geoff opened his mouth to speak, only to flush as his stomach grumbled. He glanced quickly over at Vincent and felt himself blushing more as Vincent raised an eyebrow; of course the elf would be able to hear his rumbling gut over the din of the bar... "You have not ordered yet?" Vincent asked. Geoff shook his head. "Nah. Wanted to come see you first." "But Timmy's Tots is your favorite--" "I rather see you," the words tumbled from his mouth before he could stop himself. Vincent fixed him with his pale grey eyes before smiling; the right half of his mouth slowly curled upwards to match the left. "Well, then. Let us go and order." He stood up and looked down to Geoff. "Let me pay tonight; I promised you drinks, but let me buy you dinner, too. It is the least I can do to apologize for my sudden departure." "Why are you apologizing?" Geoff asked as he took to his feet, taking both of their drinks without even realizing he had done so. "You're making it sound like you didn't want to do this." "You are right," Vincent spoke over his shoulder, already making his way to the door, "I did not want to do this, but the owners finally came back to me with dates for the audit. I think they were expecting me to decline because of the short notice." "Well that's just poor planning on their part." Geoff grinned as Vincent threw him a wink. "You know, I think I see now why you didn't want to invest in them. No security controls and banking on last minute plans? Yeah, those're bad business practices." "That, and their main collateral was a very old bottle of wine." "You're joking." Geoff stared at Vincent as they stepped outside. "Seriously? They were using wine?" "Indeed they were - a rare bottle from an elven vintner." "I didn't even know you could use wine as collateral..." Vincent laughed. "You would be surprised to know what you can use as collateral."

Geoff continued staring at the elf as they made their way up to the truck. "You know, the more you tell me, the less sense this world makes. Wine as collateral... what next? Snack cakes?" Geoff stared at Vincent as the elf suddenly became very interested in gravel at his feet while biting back a smile. "You've seriously seen someone who tried to use snack cakes?" Vincent poked at a piece of granite with the tip of his shoe. "Not the cakes themselves - the recipes. But that was a long time ago and, surprisingly, Puppy Paw Cakes has done quite well for itself." He smiled as Geoff came to stand beside him in the line for the food truck...

With their orders placed, they settled themselves down at one of the picnic tables in the biergarten. Geoff idly rolled the pager from the food truck between his hands as he tried to look at both Vincent and everything that wasn't Vincent. After a few exchanges comprising of awkward stares and shy smiles whenever Vincent caught him staring, he let his gaze fall down to the table as he stayed quiet; in truth, he didn't trust himself to speak, for fear of blurting out even more embarrassing statements.

Unfortunately, Vincent wasn't letting him stay quiet.

"You never told me how the month has gone for you. How is work? Your pack?" "Pack's all fine. We went on a little trip to Raphael's cabin and spent the nights there. Saw some deer, ate some venison. It was a good time." Geoff gave a half-hearted smile as he continued to stare at the table. "As for work, it's gotten interesting." "Oh? A new case?" "Yeah. A new job, actually. Well, a temporary one. I'm doing some special work right now for the lieutenant. If he likes how I handle it, it might become my permanent job." "What are you doing?"

Geoff hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. Vincent already knew about werewolves and Geoff was sure the elf knew about vampires. And, by that logic, Vincent probably also knew about ghouls and other unsavory things. He licked his lips before placing the pager down on the table. "You know what ghouls are, yeah?" Vincent nodded. "Well, previously we had someone tracking them down. She's, uh, retired. At least, that's the story they're telling us. She retired and they needed someone to take over the work. They picked me. Well, I say they picked me. I think someone else pulled some strings to get me picked. I mean, I don't think I'm the best for it, but I'm gonna try hard to get this figured out." "Pulled some strings?" Vincent frowned. "I am afraid I am not following." "I don't really want to name him, but, uh," he tapped his thumb on the table as he thought through his words, "someone made a call to Clifford and convinced him I was a good fit for this. Actually," he shot Vincent a glance, "you might know the elf that made the call." "Just because I am an elf does not mean that I know all the elves in this city." Vincent frowned. "You sure?" Geoff grinned. "I mean, isn't there, like, a mailing list or something? Monthly meetings?" "Oh, ha hah," Vincent rolled his eyes as he took another drink. "So, does that mean you know Jean-Claude?" "Daemonis?" Vincent continued to frown. Geoff nodded and barked a laugh as the elf sighed. "You do know him!" "I... yes." Vincent slowly admitted. "I do know him. Sometimes I regret it--" "So you do know every--" "That was a bad example," he huffed, "and should not be counted." "Whatever you say, Vince." Geoff winked. "So when's the next meeting?"

Vincent snatched the pager from Geoff's hands as it began to beep. He stood up without another word and all but marched himself back to the food truck. Geoff watched Vincent retreating back - and backside - as he sipped his beer. As fun as it was to ruffle Vincent's feathers, watching his reactions were even more enjoyable; he always liked seeing Vincent's stoic facade slip, even if it only lasted for a few seconds.