Some Fictional Swords

This was meant to be a Top Ten listicle type thing but then it ran out of gas. I realized that it was more certain poses or people with swords. So tweaked it a bit for some riveting content.

If you read this list and it sends you into a flight of fury then I am sorry. I had no clue there was a sword lobby. Thought that maybe it had died around World War 1. All that said, here are some cool swords I can elaborate on.

Crysknife from Dune

I once had an ex girlfriend try to read Dune and she read the first sentence and immediately put it back on the shelf. Its a sci-fi lovers science fiction that is a space opera with not a ton of fun. That doesn't mean they are bad, but you think you are going to get Star Wars and instead you get a dusty Hamlet except here they talk about the geopolitics of medieval Denmark. You like world building? Then Dune is your book. And, yes I am very excited for the new movie. And, yes, I know the 1984 one is awful. And, also yes, the varying sequels all have ups and downs and suffer from new Star Wars syndrome where everyone is connected.

But crysknifes are bad ass. Made from the tooth of a fallen sandworm, which is akin to a god. A knife made from god parts!! Infinetly sharp and "if it is drawn it must draw blood."  I do not dig the biological look to it. The yellowed body and hive like aspect of all the holes. Feels like a shit load of angry bees is going to come out of it.

Source: https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Crysknife

Brotherhood Sword from Final Fantasy X

I originated the fake rule that I have told to a handful of friends (Which means, of course, you live by it) that all boys must go through a pro-wrestling phase. A related one is that your favorite Final Fantasy is likely whichever one you played during your formative years. 13 to 16 years of age I would say. For me that was Final Fantasy X.

And before we get to the hardware....I am not getting into some argument about which one is the best. Because I have only played a few and that is one fandom I do not mess with. Like, when we go to the local game store sometimes there are guys playing Card Fight Vanguard and I am not fucking with that crew. They have cards with power levels in five figures. Same for any Sacramento King fans. Those are HARD people.

Source: SquareSoft

But Final Fantasy X was that one for me so here we go. I love this goofy thing which has a lovely name of Brotherhood and bestowing it on someone shows that fraternity. The fish hook tip at the end (which I would assume, in real life, is woefully impractical. It will literally hook onto things and ruin your flow), the bubbling blue water in the body, and the little handkerchief flourish at the end all give it some steampunk water world vibes. Which is how i would describe the first few hours of FInal Fantasy X.


The Diamond Sword From Minecraft

Maybe its because you have to build the Diamond Sword yourself? Or maybe its because there is nothing stronger than it in game. There is no secret super duper platinum sword. All you can do is enhance it with magic but at a base level there is nothing stronger. But there is something very strong and EARNED about getting this bad boy. Which is hilarious considering how it looks and the frantic cartoony nature of the game's combat but this thing feels incredibly powerful. When you have the diamond sword you have gotten somewhere in the game regardless of any achievement the game tells you. Full diamond gear? That is God mode.

Source: Mojang, Microsoft

Darth Maul's Lightsaber From Phantom Menace

Ok, hear me out. Unless you were there in 1999 it is very easy to dismiss the HYPE for The Phantom Menace especially twenty something years later after endless (and mostly well deserved derision). But, it was so cool. A new Star Wars. Who is that? What is going to happen. And why does that guy have a lightsaber WITH TWO BLADES!?!? That fight in the Naboo corridors was wonderful and the visuals make it. And that double edged lightsaber is part of that. Disclaimer: I know that the "old" Stat Wars is gone and the "new" Star Wars has new canon where Darth Maul survived and becomes this key villain in all these shows and books, etc. And, that is great. Go with that. He still has that awesome sword.

Source: Lucasfilm, Disney

Stay sharp, folks!

Fleeting Time

Today I went for a walk. To further cheat death and guarantee I'm around

Longer to pay off my car

Write "From hells heart I stab at thee" on the

final check. Laugh a bit longer at memes shared by my crush. That report from work

The Pantiloni Landscaping account. Copy is

my passion. We got it. 

I take supplements. GNC is essential.

Fish oil and zinc and vitamin c

Longer to see the films soon to be leaked 

on the web. Those poor actors.

I'll fit in college pants again I've drug around every move. Cedar chest crammed with them.

On the walk, I moved the fallen branches of 

Scotch Pine away from the foot path. Twisted boughs from the trail into some strangers backyard. "There." I said. "Safe" Attaboy.

"Damnit." Stranger said. "Not again."

False fall where cold winds shimmer the ponds of water on the sidewalk

"I'm spent," gurgles the drowned grass. No more room the water takes over the dips in the trail. This valley is now a lake. For the fleeting time being.

Fish Story

One hobby I've had since childhood is aquarium keeping. Note that how active a fish keeper I am depends on the circumstances. Which, I guess, is true for anything but what I want to emphasize is the going to college is a killer for the hobby. Renting or moving three states over also jacks it up. And each time you strike your tank and reset you face the start up cost. Tank, filters, substrate, chemicals, patience, and fish.

To give some bonafides to my fish keeping I want to write about my evolution. From a single gallon unfiltered fish bowl* to then 10 gallons and 20 gallons. Ive never gone bigger due to the aforementioned. Moving tends to strain relationships in ways reserved for assembling Ikea furniture. Moving a fish tank? With the soaking weight of the substrate and water? You better be either swole, clever, or blessed with a patient (and hopefully swole and/or clever) bud. My father in law has a long neglected 50 gallon tank that is more filth than water. In its ever decreasing depths lurks a monster plecostomus the length of my forearm. Plecos (as is easier to refer to the miscellaneous species by the generic) are those "tank cleaning" fish. And that is a bold face lie because plecos do not clean your tank (they don't eat algae or poop) and are inherently messy fucking monsters. They grow to the size of the tank until, like the basement monster here, all the they can do is barrel roll in what is now a coffin of many errors.

Gaze upon my works and despair

Source

That said, I made that mistake because getting a tiny one inch pleco and turning it into a monster is a common fish keeping mistake. So is getting live bearer swordtails, mollies, or guppies that have dozens of fry gobbled by their parents. I grew about three generations before the cannibalism, not all the bad genetic cross breeding,** wiped them out.

As I learned about the fish I leveled up into caring about the tank. No more plain beige river stone but instead living substrate like black sand. This stuff comes in sealed bags with water and living bacteria. Perfect for plants. All the anxiety of gardening above ground but now do that underwater. And then success is when they get so large you need to prune them back. I got some broad leaf sword plant to flower! It had an anthurium flower look with a pale white flower and a scaly and swarthy stamen.  Marimo moss balls like green Star Trek tribbles. I don't go cheap an buy the ones that are tennis balls wrapped in moss. Eventually they grow too big and blister open so its a coiled carpet of moss on the bottom of the tank.

I have tiger barbs the size of half dollar coins that I've nursed for five years and at the peak of fish keeping I had three tanks. And a commitment to half water changes each week.

Now, I no longer have that energy. I condensed my two 20 gallon tanks into one, especially after the light hood failed on another. And it looks pretty good with a thick jungle vibe that hides the archway of my mopani wood. Got cory cats (my favorite fish) and snails to for a vertically designed tank. Wasting nothing, and to keep the good biological bacteria going, I have three HOB filters on the back of it making for a way overfiltered and densely planted/living system. For the unitaited this is equivalent to hooking up three Xboxes to make one SUPER Xbox albeit...its still just an Xbox. But you never have to delete any data!

Merging the two tanks brought a dozen or so assassin snails into the now solo tank.

What a poetic incongruity! Assassin snail! I bought six tiny ones from RMS Aquaculture*** two years ago to neutralize a plague of pesky pond snails.And, they've grown into giant (well for a snail) helical terrors.

Im going to wreck it

Source

Because, in the new tank I came across two hollowed out husks for my nerite snails! Nerite's being "good" snails bought to actally eat algae and general shuck off film from the tank. They are the secret to a great aquarium. And they are expensive, like $5 a pop for something the size of a chick pea. Here was $10 left to squander, dispatched from their life too early.

First thought? They just died naturally. But then I saw six assassin's rugby scrum style piled on top of a hapless nerite! The bastards are ganging up on the "good" snails! I had become an ecological terrorist. God letting loose the satanic serpent in the garden.

The combined tank had few pond snails so the assassins must have shucked those and then, in hungry rage, "chased" down the nerites to hollow them out.

I spent minutes (Its a small tank) knocking assassins off the stalks of plants. On top is where the nerites like the graze on the biological film of the leaves. Get down, you bastards. I will be back in...a couple of hours. I  also crushed some smaller assassins in between my fingers. But while it felt satisfying with pond snails, here I wanted to cry. Sorry, boys. But, you left me no choice. Of course, in their snail voices, they would counter me saying what idiot would not expect this. Assassin is in our name. We EAT other snails. Fuck, you snails. SQUISH!

Is anyone in the market for an assassin snail?

*It was actually a cube. It was meant for hamsters. Or hermit crabs. Really just a plastic cube with a slit top for air.
**Copies of copies of copies of copies. Ever have a professor in college who gave you pamphlets of "their" textbook. The unpublished one? Or the out of print book of which they have the only dog eared copy in the state? My fish were like that.
***Its big and has a TON of fish but there is no joy. Eeveryone who works there I swear is just minutes away from bugging out for a smoke break. A store with joy locally in the NEO is Pet's General. That is the truth.

A Play on Homeschooling

Life lessons while homeschooling


Me: What is the theme of this story?
Son: Um...oh! To not trust strangers!
Me: Yes!
Son: Yeah, like you should only trust people who are friendly. Like your mom, dad, teacher. Or a police office.
Me: Oh, yeah, but...never trust the police.
Son: Wait...why
Me: ... ***how to explain institutionalized racism, a de-emphasis on community policing, polarized social dynamics, poverty, and the allure of power to a 6 year old*** Well...never talk to the police unless I'm there. Or you are in mortal danger.
Son: Yeah, or if you are lost.
Me: Yes...or that

On Minor Inconveniences

I imagine the cells in my laptops battery to be hexagonal honeycombs interlaced with lithium and nickle. And a few have flickered out and begun to wean away the light from their neighbors. The battery is a Light Brite clown plucked of a few red bulbs on its nose. Its just bad enough. Askew but functional like the door to the patio that is swollen from the faulty weather stripping. You have the shoulder the life out of it to close. I can never be unplugged for more than 40 minutes. I carry a 10 pound semi portable desktop around with me with less a lifespan than a mayfly.
The minor annoyances of privilege come forward during this time of plague and quarantine. I hate myself for them but they remain. I confess them in my journal, where no one is sure to read them.

"Dear Diary, today the motor on the electric pencil sharpener died. I had to dig through the junk drawer to find the manual one I had from senior year figure drawing. I had no clue we had so many markers. And packets of seed. And half dried glue. Now I need to go back out to the trash."

"Dear Diary, today in the work Slack chat no one gave a like to my meme."

"Dear Diary, I am afraid they are realizing at work how I can be replaced. I never expected it, but I never expected the plague."

"Dear Diary, the fish tank begun to leak and I lost it. No one saw it but I said a Nancy Kerrigan "WHY ME!?" to the barbs and cory cats living in there.

"Dear Diary, today I wrote in a voice that is hard to separate from my own. It remind me of the most cutting feedback I ever heard. "When I read your story, all I can think of is the college fitness center. And this shouldn't be the case. Your story shouldn't be so insular. Parasitic.'"

I try to follow the advice but everything comes as a caricature. Remember, parasitic. So a confident man is indubitably a player. The kind of guy who sharks pool halls and want to wager on the second of your friendly games. "Never fall for that," told me one of my mom's steady boyfriends as we left the pool hall. "Only play with people you know."

How have my character changed? Im not sure I have, yet.

Something Scary, The Lighthouse

Spend enough time in Twitter and you find digital gangs of the like-minded. If you ever spent time on a message board in the 90s or 2000s then its like that but only centralized through effort. 

There is NBA Twitter, which is undefeated.

There is Mil/NatSec Twitter, which is humanistic and self depreciating.

There is MTG Twitter, at odds with its varying factions like some nerdy Balkans.

There is film twitter which is where I get most of my movie recommendations.

So when I saw The Lighthouse on Amazob Prine I had to say, let's go! I liked The Witch and Hereditary.

I won't be poetic and get right to saying yeah this is a good movie. Well acted with an uncomfortable intimacy that romanticizes nothing about the situation. Neat movie to reflect on during these plague times when we have time to watch and write blogs. Amazing verisimilitude even to how it is shot in some wonky aspect ratio used by camera in the old Instagram  app icon. This is a film geek's movie. Which I am not (I just dabble in all meaning I'm a C+ in hobbies) but I can appreciate the touches.

Is it spooky? Eh not really save for a very unnerving scene with the sole female role in the movie. Its a spiraling sense of woe and anxiety which is nice when so many lingering shots on the buildings spiral staircase. A rare story open to interpretation but also quite clear in what happens. Innocuous things have a malignancy to them. A seagull. A mermaid figurine. The nightly toast.

Sometimes things are good beacuse they are just entertaining and fun. This film is good because its a good story albeit not sure you will find any sort of them/allegory. The statement is that they made it.

Oh and HARK! And, monkey punch!

Fake News 1

"Please make sure to remove any contact lenses. Wear your glasses, if you need them." This came from the friendly security guard at the Corning test lab. She pulled a pen from a loop around her arm and gave it to me to sign the release.

"Oh, I don't wear contact lenses," I say.

"Great. When the tests are very aggressive tiny shards can still fly off."

It's Dr. Betty Gallo job at the Corning plant to push the latest glass to its limits. A new Pyrex glass shaped like Betty Boop? 

"That was us! Well we just used a demo royalty free cat at first but we proved we could do it. All those angles."

Dr. Gallo walks me down a catwalk over a regular din of thuds and partial shatters. Every so often its a "dung--crink" She even wear a lab coat over a hot pink blazer. No shoulder pads, however.

She still has a hint of loopy Minnesota accent in her, testament to a previous life there including a gig at 3M fibers.

Today is a Smash Day. Dr. Gallo and her team are researchers so most days are spreadsheets and models. But on a Smash day (They happen every 6 months) people can let all frustrations go unhinged.

Her team is bouncing new glass wares off varying surfaces to test durability. Break patterns. Chipping. "It's a supply chain issue. Cost too. We make a funny pattern on the glass like say paint it and everything is thrown off."

When loading the rockets for Apollo missions NASA accounts for everything to the weight of the freeze dried ice cream. One more set of dehydrated eggs and could the launch be sent on a collision course. Same for the glass. "Add soemthing obvious to you measuring dish like say a handle and we have all sorts of angles," said Dr. Gallo. We had just reached the armory.

Baseball bat, wooden.

"Beacuse now it can break different where it lands and how. Can the handle reverberate that shocks back into the glass?"

Cricket bat. In Upstate NY?

"Oh watch out this can be heavy"

20 pbs sledgehammer

She has it all. Ball bearings and rubber bands. Hammers with wooden and synthetics shafts a Dremmel drill.

Collapsible batons like police use. The "shiinnnnk" noise they make on opening is beyond satisfying.

"Everything but guns," she smiles and closes the now empty closet. "That needs some more control"

Being Cold

I've spent more time along and freezing in last 4 weeks then in my entire life. The freezing part? That was hard for the first 18 years or so. Alone? I've always been ok riding solo. That's easy for me to say as big, fat passes as white guy. But never were both factors so together as in the recent stay at home situation. I'm in the downstairs basement office with no heat except the ornery, overweight cat. She curls into a blob on the Ikea chair and wheezes, putting out low grade BTUs.

But, predominantly, I'm alone in my office. My building. The walls here have bent from years of seesaw temperatures. It takes forever for water to dry after sweeping it through with a mop. The floors stay slick and dangerous with dappled slow drying water. 

There are varying degrees of cold. 

There is the sudden chill. That one wakes you up as you feel it creep up your spine and to the top of your head. The nagging chill from the bottom of your feet as it cuts through your socks and under the tongue of your sneakers. That is the worse as its cold enough to slow everything down but not enough to kill you. It makes me miss keystrokes as I scrunch the sleeves of my sweater as high as they go over my wrists. Press my hand against furniture and it saps whatever warmth Ive built. Errantly graze a brass door knob and feel it sickle through skin. Rime forms in standing water and the drip drop noises sound thicker.

A True Story

This is a true story. This happened. In the 11th grade. I've changed names to protect the affected.

In this plague I often check my privilege.

I have food. Health insurance. Internet. Vehicles. A job. An office to be solitary in while I work. I worry about nothing save my A1C. My boredom.

My privilege is also education. Bless be my 11th grade AP biology teacher, Mrs. Manilla.

From her I learned early the difference between a virus and a bacteria. She staged a debate where we had to argue of viruses were truly alive as they were nothing but packets of genetic material. No cells. No Golgi apparatus. 

But here is the story...we were learning about reproduction. The real dry stuff, don't worry. X and Y chromosomes. Blastulas and what not.

And Mrs. Manilla told us how seven was mostly water and sugar. "Glucose. For the sperm cells to use as energy"

Then Mariela raises her hand.

Few words. Mariela was the sort of high school character they come up in movies. Gorgeous. Intelligent, in every AP class our school could muster. Even AP French. She was trilingual! She played sports, volleyball and softball. Student council. Was she made in a lab and released on all places my high school in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico?

And she says "Then why does it taste salty?"

To which Mrs. Minilla replied "Because taste buds are on your tongue. Not the throat."

Then the class went on as if nothing but you could launch a Titan missile with the kinetic energy stored from everyone trying not to scream laugh. Poor Mariela. She didn't deserve it. She was legitimately and sincerely amazing.  Just bad timing. She recovered. See all the aforementioned.

We don't deserve our teachers. That's for sure.

No Swimming--A Poem

Prayer flags flutter over the bladed

Edge of the bulldozers shovel

What yelling, picketing, bitching, and hollering Did not stop, history did 

Moved the red bud tree, gnarled trunk, further

a few more months into its ancient life

Social distancing stunting minds, blooming others.

Coyotes run down the hollow streets

Right down Euclid, Coming down Carnegie

They have always been here

Your teacher tells you over the phone

Picking at scraps, I'm between rust 

Thick with vines now. End of summer feels

In spring you can see the coast of Canada

On Lake Erie, if you squint, if you believe 

History cleared the horizon as it whips the flags on the beach. No swimming.

Work Remotely Mix

The bots that spy on me when I use Youtube reminded me that I have created a quarantine-remote work playlist. They nicely label it "My Mix" but its the drive to work in 13 minutes when it usually takes 25 mix. I wanted to share it because listening to it every day reminds me of this single moment. Is this going to be one of those moments where everyone remembers where they were?

Where were you when you were told to stay at home due to Covid 19? When work got canceled? Or made remote?* Is this like a 9/11? Challenger explosion? OJ verdict? I doubt it has that sharp punch. Instead its a pervasive gloom. So less of a moment then changes and activities. THose memes people pass around asking for five jobs but one is a lie, etc. Instead I think of this mix. And if you read the warning there is a lot of electronic music here so be forewarned.



A song to shuffle down the highway too or open my icy dark office to. If this were a movie the opening credits would play along building to a moment you would think is exciting but is actually quite dull. The log in for my computer takes and opens my email. Stuff like that



A song to type and bounce from room to room to. Did that tile drop to the floor? Has anyone been here? Did the cleaners do what we asked? Dial keys tones to check my voicemail. Here is a ton of email drafts flying out the old inbox. The copier just warmed up. So, lets go!



Boots and cats. Boots and cats. Boots and cats. Boots and cats. Boots and cats. The getting thing done song. Boots and cats. Boots and cats. Boots and cats. Boots and cats. At around 1:47 in the "chorus" of the song there is a quick drum tick tock beat that makes me idle thinking of work crushes. But then back to boots and cats, boots and cats, boots and cats

Shit usually at this point I have to take a phone call so the songs stop....one second....Ok, all done....



A quick break and then getting more stuff done.



Yes, because I, in my dark office surrounded by the shells of broken laptops and wondering if that noise I just heard is a mouse or a murderer means I am truly the hardest motherfucker ever.



Hardest. Motherfucker. Ever. But...only when I have taken my asthma meds and my Emergen-C vitamin powder



I am incapable of listening to this song and not start doing some sort of exercise. One day a coworker made fun of how I did pushups and damn right I sung this song. And, fuck pushups. I am not Batman so lets see how those pushps help you when you need your time sheet signed or computer password, reset!?



Now I am sad. I don't know why but I am. And here usually I start listening to some podcast or talking to myself.





*I do because I'm a weirdo. I had just raced back from a wholsesale club on the far far west suburbs to buy a cartoonish amount of pens and gallon zip loc bags for remote learning kits our school was making.  I jumped out of the car when I saw the texts from co-workers we had been canceled for three weeks. Then our reading teachers opened the door for dismissal and told me. It was warm that day for early March.

On Mami in Quarantine

Mami called me the other day to tell me that she has begun to super self isolate and not leave the basement of my sister's house. My sister lives in one of those McMansion style homes cut quickly from what used to be a swamp so its big. Bigger than my house so Mami saying she is quarantined to the basement is the equivalent of me being quarantined to my house. She still drinks wine. Which I am not sure how she gets but I imagine it is one of my nieces dropping it outside the basement door that opens to the patio. A tall goblet filled with wine and marked by a saucy beaded charm. Safe and fabulous.

"Better than being back home," said said meaning PR. There people are ordered to confine at all times and going into the Easter weekend prohibited from leaving homes at all Friday through Sunday. Save for gas or pharmacies everything else is to close. Mami said she would be afraid but the reality is she was a champ at this before. All those years drinking wine on the patio and talking on the cordless phone until the battery bleeds dry were practice. This is her Super Bowl.

The old house would have been ideal for quarantine. Her current apartment merely just suffices. But the old house with its two living rooms and front and back terraces offered multiple spaces to idle. The backyard with patchy grass and the doomed lemon tree. In a testament to the tropical heat if we wanted to garden we could just grab a shovel and go. Eggplants and corn and pigeon peas were favorites to just stick in the ground and come a week later to see shooting from the muddled clay. The alleyway between the houses where we could play wall ball or squirt water on the neighbor's freshly waxed car.

Watch ants idle in lines on the outside of the house. Let a mosquito sit on my arm until it engorged into a cartoon Christmas light bulb bug. Then squash it in a cruel move where so helpless it can't even fly. Watch a lot of TV. Clean the ever hot water of the tiny 2 gallon fish tank and the blue gourami skimming air off the surface. Walk down to the bottom of the street and peer over the steep hill where the neighborhood ended and dove into the Rio Piedras.

All acceptable to a basement.

Conspiracy

Here are some low grade conspiracies I swear are true.

There is no difference between the deluxe and basic options at the car wash. Maybe if it was one of those hand wash places when your extra five dollars gets another guy on the hood. But at an automatic place? Total tipoff.

The reason toothpaste commercials show a great big gooey glob of toothpaste is to sell more. You only need a pea sized amount. It even says that on the packaging!

That Jetdry rinse agent stuff is baloney. A plot by Big Dish to suck your money. Oh, its for your fine china? Well if you had such dishes I know your maid is polishing them anyway!

They put all those stickers and cardboard inserts on new pants so you deliberately miss one and look like a jabroni the next day at work/school. I dont need seven stickers telling me what size these are! I am not a cyclops!

The truth can hurt sometimes.

Barenaked Ladies

I was up at 4am on slogging through chromebook serial numbers and had the CW's Supergirl on in the background. The CW's whole Arrowverse is something considering it began as just a single show about a Oliver Queen/Green Arrow that then begat about five other shoes and produced the sort of unified TV universe to mirror what Marvel does on the big screen. But, this isn't to talk about those shows it was just this one scene where Supergirl's adopted Earth sister can't hang out with Supergirl because her sister has a date. To go see a Barenaked Ladies concert. In the year of our lord 2016-ish.

This is not a throw away line. Arrow had an episode where Steve Aoki got name dropped a ton but HE WAS IN THE EPISODE! The couple never goes to the concert. The band never shows up. However it does show the couple (Alex and her police detective girlfriend. I am horrible with names on the show. Note I watch it in the background) in band shirts as they prepare to go to the concert. No offense to Barenaked Ladies. GOod for them for still playing shows and making people happy but the name drop and then the little payoff felt hapless and unbelievable. And note this is a show with aliens and alternate universes and a lady who can fly and is bullet proof.

That's it. I should sleep more.

*I will argue Arrow Season 1 into 3 is some solid TV action. Once he becomes the ersatz Batman for the TV universe I tapered off and checked in for big moments and crossovers. Hey, just like paper comic books.

Ikoria Early Hot Takes

A brief stop at attempts to sound poetic for a brief old man rant about the upcoming MTG set: Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths

Look so I lived through Scourge where we were told that it was going to be the big crazy set with monsters and that fizzled like Y2K. Then the company delivered with big old sets like Rise of the Eldrazi and the dragon madness on Tarkir.

But, this set is coming in a hot huge mess. And that is both the positive and negative aspects of  hot huge mess. To be timely this set gives me Tiger King vibes. Big and loud and filled with characters and emblems. You want to keep looking but should you? Easy to get (IT IS HUGE FUCKING MONSTERS!) but also difficult to get (What are these mechanics? Why am I looking for my vintage Mirage rules insert book?!)

I appreciate the flavor of this world. It has this Godzilla vibe (more on that later) where humans are trapped on a world filled with these epic beasts that we live around. Pick a side or get crushed. And there is something primally pleasing about GIANT guys in MTG. I am old enough to remember when we thought Craw Wurm was an absolute unit. My first rare ever, opening a 4th edition starter pack on the second floor of Plaza De Las Americas, was Leviathan. LOOK AT IT! IT IS HUGE!

This card is also awful

So, I dig that. But they amped up wacky-o-meter to something around Leviathan's converted mana cost because we have dinosaur cats and hippo dinosaurs and demon krakens and nightmare elementals and all kinds of jams.

OH LAWD HE COMING!!

Because this permeates the set (which makes sense from a design point of view. You can get these wild guys at all rarities) it really feels like we are in wacky land. Nothing wrong about that but none of these strike me as terrifying. Fun but...well once in the sixth grade we had to design an animal and I designed the Slicer which was a razor tooth tiger otter thing with poison. Got me an A because I made the thing and wrote my at least five paragraphs essay explaining it but still goofy.

I like it but it feels like too much for my old man bones.

The mechanics make me cringe. WOTC/MTG clearly signs they are going digital with this set because what a monster to track on paper. Hard to explain unless you know the rules but mutate gives me the unease that banding did back in the day. The mechanic takes me back to arguing over the lunch table on who was right.

Whenever I see this name I have to roll off "Block Rocking Beats"

Hang around gaming for long enough and you will hear the term "grok." It's shorthand for being to understand something organically. A program you use can be easy to "grok" if the interface lends itself to it.

This is the first MTG mechanic I can't grok without outside resources. And that does not mean how to use efficiently or optimize. I'm good enough to know why I lose at MTG but not good enough to elevate past C+ efficiency.

No, I mean that reading the card doesn't really seem to explain the card.

On a digital client like MTG Online or Arena, well that is easy because the program enforces the rules. I bet Arena will have a neat little demo that shows you how your creatures mutate if you go top or bottom.* And that is awesome but what a mess to track in paper especially at the LGS level. I feel that I am either going to get henpecked by the spikiest spike or let some kid slide with a misplay. Either way I will lose. Either to efficiency or the dumb luck that never favors me,**

Even more complex is the companion mechanic and limitations on deck building. Only even numbered cards? Only one card type? Amazing how MTG can keep pushing design space 25 years in and how digital can amplify that but god damn is it going to feel bad at the FNM when someone runs this guy and they have something with a five cost converted mana cost. Because people are human. Everyone seems to be screaming about cheating but I'm just worried about casual fuck ups.

I think I can run this in Oona commander as one of the 99, right? Right?!

Call a judge? No LGS here has them on staff. Be a dick? Its not in my DNA. Get wrecked? OK, I guess.


One fun thing with the set is the alternate art on the cards. Remember the Godzilla reference?

I shoot the lights out

Somehow WOTC got with Toho to license their 50 plus years of monsters to make alternate art versions of cards in the set. So, no, Godzilla is not really in MTG but he represents a card (Zilortha, Strength Incarnate) with same effects. Its a pre-made alter. And note there are other art variants available in different packs, etc.

I think it is easy to be dismissive of WOTC's recent dive into alternate art/limited edition madness. I wish I was rich enough to afford all of them but as mentioned earlier...I'm human. However, with the PAPER release of Ikoria delayed until May (maybe even later)*** I do hope these help sell packs so we can keep putting little bits of cardboard in plastic sleeves and thinking that it is us who is somehow smarter.


*Yes...phrasing.
**Note that every MTG player says this.
***Digitally it will still release as normal. And while I look foward to trying these cards and mechanics out (I mean, you read this blog. I'm wrong often) on say Arena it really fucking sucks. It is petty to say that is what irked me most about the pandemic but damn it I'm not made of stone. .

Creeping Chill

Its a creeping chill in my office made colder by the emptiness of the space. At regular intervals there are phantom noises that should not be there. A gurgle of water from the outflow pipe. The bright whir of fans and compressors leading into the rattle of the stainless steel. The drop of panels in the ceiling as drip pans overflow. The whine of the copier running its final power cycle and going to sleep.
The noises don't scale into the terrifying. We don't have phantom footfalls or the slam of doors. Its a stillborn sense of cold in the hallways and elevator shafts. The bricks of the walls sweat as whatever warmth leaves their clay and winnows into the air. Time stops except when that sharp scream of the phone brings me back to reality.
"Hello. Yes, Im here. No, I can't be on any help but I will text them."
And I forward my messages along into the void while surrounded by the silence.