The Functionality of the Black Iron Prison

[Doktor Howl]

Well, now you are boring me.   

I am unsure why you revert into this weird hipster thing every time you visit, but it's tiresome.

We get like a day of you acting like you got some sense, often some really good posts, but then this.

Carry on, I suppose.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

So once upon a time I was hanging out with a porn star and her husband when their neighbors come over for a visit and they're like DON'T TELL THEM ABOUT THE SEXY THINGS JUST CHILL AND WE CAN FUCK AROUND WHEN THEY'RE GONE and I'm a dumbass and more than a little drunk so sure whatever fine. Eventually I decide to break out a deck of cards and perform my favorite party trick: Drunk Tarot.

There is a RITUAL to Drunk Tarot. You have to sit on the floor with me. You have to posit a question or at least a subject. You have to shuffle the deck. And, most importantly, you have to give me a sip of your drink.

Drunk Tarot is performed with a standard 52 deck of cards, borrowed from the host. I explain that the suits of a playing card deck map to the suits of a tarot deck: diamonds to coins/pentacles, clubs to rods, spades to swords, hearts to cups. The layout is always the celtic cross, because it's big and fancy looking.

After doing a read for our host and hostess, one of the friends asks if he can go. He has seen this ritual play out. He shuffles the deck, I take a sip, we lay out the cards.

10 of spades shows up in the distant past slot.

I make a face. "This might be a mistake, this card is supposed to map to the ten of swords, which often represents a violent or untimely death..."

He loses his shit.

"HOW DID YOU KNOW MY COUSIN GOT MURDERED?????"