I can feel Magic the Gathering eroding my sanity. I simultaneously loathe the game, and love it. I've been playing it all fucking day long and I can't seem to get enough. Yet I can feel my contempt for it building. The game has a way of screwing you over in ways that seem not only statistically improbable, but often absurd. I'll spare you the boring details, mainly because it would take time to lay out the rules, game mechanics, deck archetypes and compositions, card types, and all the other bullshit that comes along with it. Let's just say that the way some of these games play out can be absolutely uncanny. For instance, you can only have 4 of any given card in a deck (except for basic land cards). Imagine an opponent drawing 3 of those 4 cards in the top 20 cards of their 60-card deck. Then imagine the likelihood of them drawing the 4th copy in the following few turns - when drawing that card would be precisely what they'd need to win the game on the spot. You might say it seems pretty damn unlikely, but you'd be wrong. The number of times things just like that happen on any given day are definitely eyebrow-raising.
Lots of people believe the game is rigged. I'm not in that camp, but I understand why people feel this way. I guess it's like this with any kind of conspiracy theory. All you need is a little bit of doubt, a few odd coincidences, and a group of people wanting to make order out of chaos. There's comfort in thinking that someone must be behind the curtain designing a grand scheme. It takes away that deep fear and mystery of the unknown in all our hearts. Sometimes there are conspiracies though, that's the quirky bit. This isn't one of them, in my opinion, but others do exist. The fact the some conspiracies are real is enough to send the conspiracy nuts spinning off the deep end, right off the flat edge of the earth.
I went out for a trip to the store earlier. The weather was wet and nasty. The kind of weather that's just constantly spitting a raspberry in your face. Everyone wore wincing expressions as they lugged their groceries home or pushed their pedals through the hissing bike lane. I was happy I didn't have far to go to get what I needed. Just a few things. Asia and I did the larger grocery trip yesterday. I'll be starting dinner sometime soon. Asia finishes her woodworking workshop at 18:00 and I'd like to have something ready for her when she gets home. I'd gotten her a voucher for the workshop maybe a year or two ago, for her birthday, or Christmas, or some other anniversary. I'm curious to see what little wooden object she's made.
Later tonight there's to be a show. A friend of ours is performing. I'm likely not going, though. I may have mentioned this before but the bars in Berlin are notorious for allowing smoking. It's disgusting and literally illegal. But no one enforces the law. Gradually I've grown to be repelled by the smoke. I don't know how I used to do it the first few years I was living in Berlin. Even if you didn't drink, and you made it home at a reasonable hour, you still wake up the next morning with a cough, your eyes are unusually dry and scratchy, you have a headache and your entire body and bedroom stink like cigarettes. It's awful. These days I'd rather just skip it. I'm going to have to ask Asia to get her ass in the shower when she gets home, to wash that foul stink off her skin and head. I'd like to go and support our friend, but not when it means I need to inhale thick second-hand smoke for 4 hours straight and feel like dogshit the next day.
This is what getting old is like, for anyone reading this who's under the age of 30. Buckle up!
I didn't sleep so well. I woke up at about 7:00 but went to bed around midnight. Given Asia will be going to the show tonight I expect another night of the same. At least I don't have kids. Imagine not being able to sleep for a year? At this age? Maybe when I was 25, but now? I'd be dead. I can barely put my shoes on now without blowing out a disc. I did pushups earlier, a few sets of 10-12. My heart rate didn't really return to normal for what felt like an hour. Not that it was racing the entire time, that's not what I mean. It just was a bit elevated. This kind of shit didn't happen when I was in my 20's.
Maybe it's long Covid.
Maybe it's Maybelline.
No comments:
Post a Comment