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Showing results for tags 'American Gods'.
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There was a reason he hid me in Lakeside, wasnt there? There was a reason nobody should have been able to find me here. Hinzelmann said nothing. He unhooked a heavy black poker from its place on the wall, and he prodded at the fire with it, sending up a cloud of orange sparks and smoke. This is my home, he said, petulantly. Its a good town. Perfect wholesomeness: green grass, summer daisies, spring daffodils, and bake sale cookies bought with blood and terror, all frozen beneath a sheet of thick black ice. This smells like a fresh aquatic lake, with green grass and florals being the most prominent notes other than "icy water" but you do occasional get the whiff of something else. Like blood. Great atmospheric. Good throw and wear length.
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Florida went on for longer than Shadow had imagined, and it was late by the time he pulled up outside a small, one-story wooden house, its windows tightly shuttered, on the outskirts of Fort Pierce. Nancy, who had directed him through the last five miles, invited him to stay the night. “I can get a room in a motel,” said Shadow. “It’s not a problem.” “You could do that, and I’d be hurt. Obviously I wouldn’t say anythin’. But I’d be real hurt, real bad,” said Mr. Nancy. “So you better stay here, and I’ll make you a bed up on the couch.” Mr. Nancy unlocked the hurricane shutters, and pulled open the windows. The house smelled musty and damp, and little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies. The ghosts of long-dead cookies, whirring palmetto bugs, cigarillo smoke, and crawling things that scuttle and click. This is delightful! Spiced cookies with a bit of citrus zest (I'm guessing lime from Mr. Nancy's cologne), & some tobacco behind giving it depth, maybe a smidge of ozone as it dries. No mustiness & not really noticing anything evoking bugs but I'm not missing them. I wish I still had my decant of Mr. Nancy (Sugar cookies with bay rum, tobacco, and lime) to compare it to but I seem to recall that cookie note was less spicy & more buttery.
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A base the color of sweet dark coffee with a shimmer that runs throughout this trickster, shifting from red to green. Ergh. I'm not a fan. This is the 4th claw polish I've bought from the post, and I think they just aren't my cup of tea. All of them have been very thick, which can be nice, since they are usually one coaters, but they take a while to dry and I'm an impatient, thin coats sort of gal. The Jeweled Spider in particular seems REEEEALLY thick. Too thick. Also, their colors always seem more subtle than I'm wanting, their shimmer/holo effects more understated than I'm expecting. When I see holo, glitter, or shifting shimmer, I'm thinking scintillating rainbow swirls to mesmerize my friends and blind my enemies with. That said, I'm sure some might find the understated holo/glimmer more sophisticated or work appropriate, so to each their own. The Jeweled Spider itself reads as creamy black nail polish to my eyes, with a very subtle green tint when it shines. In direct sun it IS really pretty, and the dark emerald green microglitter becomes apparent. It's like what Maleficent would wear. The red shift doesn't seem to show up much to me unless I really am looking for it. Very gothy color and a nice variant on black.
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Ibis and Jacquel was a small, family-owned funeral home: one of the last truly independent funeral homes in the area, or so Mr. Ibis maintained. Most fields of human merchandising value nationwide brand identities, he said. Mr. Ibis spoke in explanations: a gentle, earnest lecturing that put Shadow in mind of a college professor who used to work out at the Muscle Farm and who could not talk, could only discourse, expound, explain. Shadow had figured out within the first few minutes of meeting Mr. Ibis that his expected part in any conversation with the funeral director was to say as little as possible. This, I believe, is because people like to know what they are getting ahead of time. Thus, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, F. W. Woolworth (of blessed memory): store brands maintained and visible across the entire country. Wherever you go, you will get something that is, with small regional variations, the same. In the field of funeral homes, however, things are, perforce, different. You need to feel that you are getting small-town personal service from someone who has a calling to the profession. You want personal attention to you and your loved one in a time of great loss. You wish to know that your grief is happening on a local level, not on a national one. But in all branches of industryand death is an industry, my young friend, make no mistake about thatone makes ones money from operating in bulk, from buying in quantity, from centralizing ones operations. Its not pretty, but its true. Trouble is, no one wants to know that their loved ones are traveling in a cooler-van to some big old converted warehouse where they may have twenty, fifty, a hundred cadavers on the go. No, sir. Folks want to think theyre going to a family concern, somewhere theyll be treated with respect by someone wholl tip his hat to them if he sees them in the street. Mr. Ibis wore a hat. It was a sober brown hat that matched his sober brown blazer and his sober brown face. Small gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. In Shadows memory Mr. Ibis was a short man; whenever he would stand beside him, Shadow would rediscover that Mr. Ibis was well over six feet in height, with a cranelike stoop. Sitting opposite him now, across the shiny red table, Shadow found himself staring into the mans face. So when the big companies come in they buy the name of the company, they pay the funeral directors to stay on, they create the apparency of diversity. But that is merely the tip of the gravestone. In reality, they are as local as Burger King. Now, for our own reasons, we are truly an independent. We do all our own embalming, and its the finest embalming in the country, although nobody knows it but us. We dont do cremations, though. We could make more money if we had our own crematorium, but it goes against what were good at. What my business partner says is, if the Lord gives you a talent or a skill, you have an obligation to use it as best you can. Dont you agree? Sounds good to me, said Shadow. The Lord gave my business partner dominion over the dead, just as he gave me skill with words. Fine things, words. I write books of tales, you know. Nothing literary. Just for my own amusement. Accounts of lives. He paused. By the time Shadow realized that he should have asked if he might be allowed to read one, the moment had passed. Anyway, what we give them here is continuity: theres been an Ibis and Jacquel in business here for almost two hundred years. We werent always funeral directors, though. We used to be morticians, and before that, undertakers. And before that? Well, said Mr. Ibis, smiling just a little smugly, we go back a very long way Egyptian embalming compound: beeswax and fir resin, myrrh, natron salt, cassia, palm wine, lichen, henna, and camphor. This is beautiful, very complex. The beeswax is the most prominent on first spraying , along with a sort of milky cassia thing. This is an intriguing and complex scent but very easy to love
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It was getting late. He was hungry, and when he realized how hungry he really was, he pulled off at the next exit and drove into the town of Nottamun (pop. 1301). He filled the gas tank at the Amoco and asked the bored woman at the cash register where he could get something to eat. Jacks Crocodile Bar, she told him. Its west on County Road N. Crocodile Bar? Yeah. Jack says they add character. She drew him a map on the back of a mauve flyer, which advertised a chicken roast for the benefit of a young girl who needed a new kidney. Hes got a couple of crocodiles, a snake, one a them big lizard things. An iguana? Thats him. Through the town, over a bridge, on for a couple of miles, and he stopped at a low, rectangular building with an illuminated Pabst sign. The parking lot was half empty. Inside the air was thick with smoke and Walking After Midnight was playing on the jukebox. Shadow looked around for the crocodiles, but could not see them. He wondered if the woman in the gas station had been pulling his leg. Cedar shavings, a swirl of booze, a flattened French fry, and barbeque sauce. I expected this to smell like the lab's one variety of vetiver that always stinks like smoky mesquite bbq and cedar planks, and this does have a little of that scent to it, but mostly I'm getting a really lovely cedar from this atmo. This smells like the spicy, woody, natural scent of dry cedar, like the kind used in old cedar chests and hamster bedding. I've always enjoyed that scent. The booziness adds a dark, slinky, smooth, masculine touch that makes me think of black leather jackets. The sweet bbq scent is strong at first, but settles into just a touch of a sweet, spicy note after a couple minutes. I'd recommend this if you want a sweet & spicy, dry cedar with hints of sweetness and that dark, masculine edge. I just recently had the pleasure of staying in an old, well-kept, wooden cabin full of wooden furniture out in the country, and this atmo smells a lot like walking into that home. It's very much a cozy cabin in the woods, where you've gone to just sit around the lake and drink with good friends.
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What we need, said Wednesday, suddenly, is snow. A good, driving, irritating snow. Think snow for me, will you? Huh? Concentrate on making those cloudsthe ones over there, in the westmaking them bigger and darker. Think gray skies and driving winds coming down from the arctic. Think snow. I dont think it will do any good. Nonsense. If nothing else, it will keep your mind occupied, said Wednesday, unlocking the car. Kinkos next. Hurry up. Snow, thought Shadow, in the passenger seat, sipping his hot chocolate. Huge, dizzying clumps and clusters of snow falling through the air, patches of white against an iron-gray sky, snow that touches your tongue with cold and winter, that kisses your face with its hesitant touch before freezing you to death. Twelve cotton-candy inches of snow, creating a fairy-tale world, making everything unrecognizably beautiful . . . Snow, thought Shadow. High in the atmosphere, perfect, tiny crystals that form about a minute piece of dust, each a lacelike work of fractal art. And the snow crystals clump together into flakes as they fall, covering Chicago in their white plenty, inch upon inch . . . Snow upon snow upon snow. I'm very happy to have this bottle in the middle of summer! My favorite thing to do in the heat is to spray down my bed linens with cool-scented atmos (The Cemetery, Many Years Ago is probably my favorite to use for this purpose), and Think Snow For Me is going to be excellent. Most of what I get is the cold minty kind of snow note. This snow note usually doesn't play nicely on my skin, but it's a wonderful scent that makes for an excellent room/linen spray. Backing up the cold minty snow is that lovely soft sweet snow note. It's reminding me of Go to Sleep Darlings (from several Yules ago). Overall, this spray is lovely, and I'd say it's a must have if you love snow scents.
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He was walking through a room bigger than a city, and everywhere he looked there were statues and carvings and rough-hewn images. He was standing beside a statue of a womanlike thing: her naked breasts hung flat and pendulous on her chest, around her waist was a chain of severed hands, both of her own hands held sharp knives, and, instead of a head, rising from her neck there were twin serpents, their bodies arched, facing each other, ready to attack. There was something profoundly disturbing about the statue, a deep and violent wrongness. Shadow backed away from it. He began to walk through the hall. The carved eyes of those statues that had eyes seemed to follow his every step. In his dream, he realized that each statue had a name burning on the floor in front of it. The man with the white hair, with a necklace of teeth about his neck, holding a drum, was Leucotios; the broad-hipped woman with monsters dropping from the vast gash between her legs was Hubur; the ram-headed man holding the golden ball was Hershef. A precise voice, fussy and exact, was speaking to him, in his dream, but he could see no one. These are gods who have been forgotten, and now might as well be dead. They can be found only in dry histories. They are gone, all gone, but their names and their images remain with us. Shadow turned a corner, and knew himself to be in another room, even vaster than the first. It went on farther than the eye could see. Close to him was the skull of a mammoth, polished and brown, and a hairy ocher cloak, being worn by a small woman with a deformed left hand. Next to that were three women, each carved from the same granite boulder, joined at the waist: their faces had an unfinished, hasty look to them, although their breasts and genitalia had been carved with elaborate care; and there was a flightless bird which Shadow did not recognize, twice his height, with a beak like a vultures, but with human arms: and on, and on. The voice spoke once more, as if it were addressing a class, saying, These are the gods who have passed out of memory. Even their names are lost. The people who worshiped them are as forgotten as their gods. Their totems are long since broken and cast down. Their last priests died without passing on their secrets. Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end. Ancient incense and charred sacrifices echoing through time. Very smoky! I can smell the charred sacrifices, too, but I'm not really noticing anything that I recognize as incense, just a slight bit of sweetness after the initial smoke has cleared.
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A tawny gold holographic that shifts from bronze to green and back again. Gorgeous! So much holo! This is my first foray into the Post's claw polishes, and I am totally sold. One coat produces a tawny holo shimmer, almost neutral at an angle, but dazzling in direct light. Two coats is intoxicating, three-dimensional star showers of bronze champagne. Don't miss this one, it's magic.
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Champagne gold holographic that twists and turns from hues of copper to blue. Origin: Straight from the Lab Initial Thoughts: It sounded pretty on the website. In the Bottle: Rose gold with a full rainbow in its shimmer One Coat: One coat almost gives full coverage. I can see the white tips of my nails if I look hard, but in shiny light they're almost invisible. Satiny smooth finish. Two Coats: Full coverage and super shimmery sparkle. Verdict: I think this might be a multi-bottle polish. It is amazingly rainbow sparkly and yet pretty subtle. ETA: Finally got pictures working again...
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… rib cages and fire-eyed skulls stared and stuck and jutted from the flames, sputtering trace-element colors into the night, greens and yellows and blues—was flaring and crackling and burning hotly. Sparks of red peppercorns, blue-white eucalyptus leaf, and daemonorops draco against smoldering red amber and a copper sulfate-green licks of flame. This smells very craft-store-at-Christmas-time to me. I can't really pick out most of the listed notes, and was expecting a warm, peppery dragon's blood type of scent, but this smells like a big blast of cinnamon chewing gum (Big Red!) and plasticy, craft store wreaths. There's a slight, airy chill from the menthol/eucalyptus note, but mostly I can't figure out why this smells so much like cinnamon. I do kind of like the hot cinnamon mixed with that airy, cold feel. Smells like walking into a craft store full of cinnamon candles, cinnamon oils and plastic wreaths, with the frosty outside air following you into the warm store.
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A red jelly filled with floating pieces of metallic flake that range from red to orange and dark steel micro flake. This is a very deep blood red with beautiful flake. I dont see any orange but the jelly concept comes through. the polish itself seems to be a little thicker than the holos in the collection. I kind of had to goop it on but once done it is quite stunning and definitelyhas more depth than just a deep red. I do quite like it. this pic shows at least two layers, after the first coat it kind of glops on like a topper. but smooths out ok with a glossy top coat.
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Back in prison, Low Key Lyesmith had once referred to the little prison cemetery out behind the infirmary as the Bone Orchard, and the image had taken root in Shadow’s mind. That night he had dreamed of an orchard under the moonlight, of skeletal white trees, their branches ending in bony hands, their roots going deep down into the graves. There was fruit that grew upon the trees in the bone orchard, in his dream, and there was something very disturbing about the fruit in the dream, but on waking he could no longer remember what strange fruit grew on the trees, nor why he found it so repellent. Clacking white sandalwood bones, grave soil, and the bruise-purple fruits of death and decay. Gah! First yet again! I've been getting more and more into sandalwood lately, so when I saw this I jumped at it. I haven't had a lot of experience with graveyard dirt/grave soil just because if spooks me a bit (pretty sure that's the intention) so forgive me. When I sniffed right out of the mail, this was mostly the fruits/florals and sandalwood. Very pretty! Dry sandalwood as the description implies, so don't be too worried of the mixture turning foodie. I haven't sprayed this around yet but I did a bit of a skin test and the florals/fruits seem to REALLY come out then and leave sandalwood behind. With just sitting on my shelf for a few weeks, the sandalwood has really become a bit more dark (perhaps mixing with the grave soil?) so I'm excited to see how this ages.
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Four leaf clover green filled with gold shimmer and gold to bronze to silver mulitchromatic flake. This is EMERALD green. It's gorgeous and a little mad and dangerous. The gold and bronze hide in the "back" of the color, like tiny gold coins among shamrocks. Spoiler
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White crelly that appears tinged green in the bottle. Filled with black, gold, and green microflake. I guess I'm first? Woo! This is a light blue-green. The gold microflake gives it a look like there are veins of gold in it, which is really cool! From a distance, the effect is almost like static. It was a little sticky going on, but that could have been because it just came out of a 102 degree mailbox. Spoilered 'cause the image is big. Spoiler
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Vivid purple base with strong shifting purple-to-red shimmer. Origin: Straight from the Lab Initial Thoughts: I like purple. I like it a lot. In the Bottle: A very deep purple with a royal blue sheen in the glitter. One Coat: More berry than purple and most of the shimmer is pink. Two Coats: Much darker, a true royal purple, and the glitter shimmer shows a lot of blue as well as pink. Verdict: Definitely keeping this bottle. May get another. Has that lovely smooth high-quality finish as well.
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Gray creme shot through with a multichromatic shimmer shifting through green and blue to fuchsia with flecks of gold. This was a sleeper hit for me. In the bottle it looks like kind of muddy dark grey but on and in the sun it shimmers from a deep purple to a deep gray teal. adding a picture to try to show the purple and the darker teal in the sun. this was two coats and a glossy top coat, in the sun.
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A gleaming holographic obscuring an earth-brown base. I'm not typically a nail polish wearer but I bought this on a whim and it's lovely! In indirect light it's coppery and reminds me of a new penny, and when direct light hits it right, the multicolored hologram is extremely vibrant. All of these pictures are with one coat. The texture is smooth, no grit or roughness or glitter. Thumbnail as a test, with flash All 5 of left hand with flash From a little further away and a slightly different angle, trying to show how the hologram colors shift and the base color deepens. No flash, indoor lighting. My pinky nail here is the closest to that coppery color it has in indirect lighting. And two of the bottle to show the color shift: http://i.imgur.com/HoZJZBN.jpg http://i.imgur.com/DAFo3u1.jpg
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Lime-gold microglitter floating among gold flake. Can be used as a lucky topcoat, or slather on two coats for an opaque treasure chest of gold. Origin: Straight from the Post Initial Thoughts: I will never turn down a funky glitterbomb. In the Bottle: You've seen Pumpkin Spice Everything? Stardust? Nuclear Winter? This is more of the same, but in a background color that can't decide between neon yellow or neon green. One coat: Even with a practiced hand, I expect that one coat won't be enough glitter unless you want this to top-coat another color. The surface is a bit gritty. Two coats: This should mostly get the coverage you want. Let the sparkle commence. Not quite as gritty, but still uneven on me. A nail technician could probably get it to be smooth, but I needed a top coat. Verdict: If you like the BPAL Claw Polish glitterbombs, you'll like this one. I'm not sure I need another bottle, but I did get several compliments wearing it the last few days.
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Midnight blue holographic with starfire blue and gold micro flake. Origin: Straight from the Lab Initial Thoughts: I liked the idea of a deep star-pricked blue. In the Bottle: Deep blue with the barest hints of holo-sheen. And then I noticed a later of silvery glitter at the bottom. Much vigorous shaking of the bottle produced a wave of sliver hologlitter. One Coat: (first try, unshook bottle) A not-quite-opaque-enough evening blue with sparkle. Shook bottle and there seems to be more glitter involved, maybe. Two Coats: (first try, unshook bottle) Very much like blue sunstone. Dark, navy blue shot through with silver and gold. Shook bottle produces the rainbow of hologlitter. Verdict: I will probably get another bottle or two of this. Insanely smooth on application. ETA: Having worn it a day, this is a real morpher. In low/indoor light, the polish is very blue sunstone with the deep blue showing metallic flecks. In bright light or sunlight, the holo-glitter goes to town.
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Pale gray lilac glowing with a shifting sheen that morphs from purple to blue to red. Origin: Straight from the Post Initial Thoughts: I already have Baku and Oneroi. Do I need another pale purple/lavender? Yes, why not? In the Bottle: An unassuming lavender, until you turn it to the light. And then the glittery sheen of blue and deep purple comes out to play. One coat: Not quite opaque enough if you're like me and your nails naturally French-manicure with strongly white tips. A gentle lavender with hidden depths. Two coats: Good coverage and a more pronounced purple to it. Plus all the rich blue/royal purple hologlitter shine you could want. Verdict: It's the tiniest bit sticky on application but dries quickly with a smooth finish. I don't think one has to have a clear top coat other than for protection. I expect I'll get another bottle of this.
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Black based multichromatic that shifts from gold to bronze to green. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!
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Scorched orange holographic creme. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!
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A pale, sunny lemon-yellow sheen with a touch of scattered holographic. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!
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Pale pink jelly-like finish packed with iridescent Easter Grass flake. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!
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Multichromatic flake that shifts from red to orange to gold seeped in dark steel micro flake. This post is merely a placeholder for future reviews. Whoever is first to review, please report this post using the report button below, so a mod can merge it with yours. Thanks!
