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I had the idea of holding a tournament online to promote the obscure variant of Magic I greatly enjoy and this weekend I played my first sequence of matches and then decided to try recording another match with screen capture software.  So I Skype’d Tom Folsom and began playing.  Midway through his brother Ed decided to get in and the line was immediately dominated by the dumb Folsom twin who sounded like his microphone was instead a brass victrola horn.  He said he wouldn’t say much until 20 minutes leader all I hear is “oh, God!  Don’t throw up on my bed” followed by Tom yelling “No, don’t throw up on my shoes” followed by both lines going dead.

Apparently  the Folsom’s recently got a new dog that they paid for (I don’t understand people who pay for pets) that has a penchant for throwing up.  My dog was free and on the hole has stopped throwing up.   These are complications I didn’t plan for in doing an e-Tournament.  I’m curious to see what round 2 holds.  A cat having a seizure?  A heroine-crazed Brian Dennehy punching you in the solarplexis?  Who knows!

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For the last year I’ve supported a few local Magic players by providing them cards in exchange for any promotional cards they win as part of their regular playing.  They cover entrance and what not and get any prizes except for those scintillating slices of cardboard periodically dispensed to participants.  Anyway,  a local player who I think is about 12 wanted to compete in Grand Prix: Philly which is a rather large (850+ people, is my guess) tournament coming up soon and asked to borrow cards.  I refused his offers of payment and had him email a deck list of stuff he wanted the proximate week.

He sends me the list and I reply telling him I may not have everything and that he should be prepared to pick up some cards himself but after using some favors, doing some bad trades and using some of my own promos I get 71 of the 75 cards he needs and bring it to the next event.  I give him the pile, tell him that I’ve gotten 71 of the 75 cards he needs and he immediately starts pestering me for the last 4.  Why don’t you have them? Is there anyone you can buy them from? How am I a supposed to get them? Well, can’t you’re friends that actually pay you use something else?  I get him 94.6% of the cards he needs and he bitches, I let people borrow 3 or 4 cards and I practically get a shrine and receive burnt offerings, and he bitches about four god-damn cards.

Kids today.

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My watch didn’t know it was a leap-year.  I’m fine with that, really but it was a sufficient excused to come into work late.  After work, I headed to Friday Night Magic where a player had an unusually good selection of cards he’s looking to sell.  I bought about $200 in cards for about $120, not bad and I asked him where he got them.  He didn’t tell me but when I got the cards,  I started looking through the plastic sleeves and found a business card for a company that sells cards.  After FNM, I checked the firm’s page online.  I checked the card values there and it was about $220 in total.  Either this kid is a thief or an idiot, either case, I will avoid him in the future.

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I wanted to offer a specific card, Chaos Orb as a prize for a tournament I’m holding today.  After I won one on eBay on Tuesday I emailed the seller to see if I could picking it up directly from him after discovering his house was practically on the way to the tournament site.  I received no response until Thursday whereas they stated they didn’t like pick-ups as they had a problem with one previously, he then states he can express mail it to me.  Okay, how much I think, nothing… So, instead of me picking up the card and paying in cash, the fellow instead spend 23 dollars to have something overnighted a net distance of 16 miles plus the fact they now had to pay paypal fees.  w00t efficiency!