It was bound to happen...

After years of varying degrees of participation on internet user forums, I was finally banned this afternoon from BoardGameGeek.  Yes, I should be banned from participating in anything named 'BoardGameGeek' on principle alone - but that's another subject for another day.

The ban is for a single day.  Small change, to be sure - but a step in the right direction.

And, just like the birth announcement of a newborn child, I trumpet this joyous occasion with you, my blogger friends.  But unlike the hunchbacked geeks I have stumbled across at that virtual game store hangout, I will not ask you, my blogger friends, to help name the baby.

... or in helping to pop the most important question of your life.

Eyes on the game board, green-shirt.  Eyes on the board.

How is it that a friend to the poor and champion of the weak such as myself ends up in such a predicament? 

Because I told a bunch of EuroPEON artistes that their parents did a shitty job raising them.

Was that so bad?

It is a sad day, my friends.

Truth and failed morality have taken a back seat to Europeon ideals of "Artistic Expression" and "Anti-Puritanism".  The same Europeons that started at least seventeen World Wars and popularized the use of horse meat in our Taco Bells have the gall to suppress self-censorship between a man, his wife, and his naughty little card games.

... Like Dicks and Pricks®!

And when a Soldier of Smitely Goodness speaks up for the self-censoring little guy, he is met by thin skins and forced upon the sword of scandal and shame. 

I'm positive Douglas Wall knows exactly how I must feel right about now.  But it does little to ease my pain.




... Thank God for professional wrestling forums.  

Pimping for Others

The Card Game of Oz by James O'Connor


I will not typically pimp out the panhandlers of the internet (i.e., kickstarters) - but in this case I felt obligated.  Not so much because I've backed the project for my own daughter, but because I strongly feel that anything that helps stem the tide of L. Frank Baum's work fading into the cultural backwaters is something that deserves supporting.

Even if it is a cousin to the creepy Magic: The Blathering. 

Baum's writing style is not for everyone.  His corn-fed prose can be seen as hopelessly outdated to the Terabithia crowd.  What can not be argued is that L. Frank Baum was one of the first authors to weave a genuinely American fairy tale; his Oz series a stridently Midwestern Alice in Wonderland.  And yet very few children actually read the books, content enough to consider drunken Judy Garland's Over the Rainbow as the end-all-to-be-all Oz. 

Bodcast Episode 1 - The Card Game of Oz (How to Play)


Just as Douglas Wall delved into and came out celebrating the richness of Baum's landscapes with his Adventures in Oz role playing game, so too has James O'Connor with his card game.  According to the author, all 14 of the Baum books have been mined and primed - with the latter books set to be covered in future expansions. 

Who knows if the project will meet its initial funding goal, much less find the opportunity to expand itself.  As countless people have discovered over the years, L. Frank Baum's Oz is a tough sell.  Outside of the first couple of books (whose royalties he had to split with the original illustrator), even Baum had a rough go of it.  

If the Card Game of Oz gets funded, my daughter will have a tabletop game that truly interests her.  To a ten year old who is the Oz fan in the family, that's pretty cool.  Heck, she'll even be one up on her big sister; I doubt anything could be sweeter to a girl with a perpetual Jan Brady syndrome showing.

You may even find something that you can share with your own children.  
 

Your Friendly Local Gaming Store

... Or:  So THAT'S where the A.V. Kids went! 

In my neck of the words there are a couple of regarded board gaming stores, one of them minutes away.

Board games, card games, war games, role-playing games; row upon row of games and miniature supplies crammed around 4 large gaming tables rented out to dice bags and their statistical probabilities.

And, someday, a place to host Dicks and Pricks® tournaments.   

Of the games I have snagged these past months, I've purchased somewhere around 15.73% of them from that particular location.  Give or take.  That number might be shockingly low to the brick and mortar purists, but when entertainment dollars are scarce in a world of rec center youth [fill in the blank] leagues, school plays, cello lessons, traveling softball teams and volleyball academies, you have to pick and choose your battles.

I drift in and out, so I am not a 'Valued Customer' - nor do I even know if the store in question has a program that rewards the schmuck off the street by discounting 10-15% off retail.  Frankly, there should be banners peppering the store with such reminders.

Because let me tell you, the typical board game these days runs you something between thirty-five and sixty-five smackeroos.

Hobbyist Lobbyists

... Or:  For the Love of God, please do not judge me!


Unless it revolves around finding cures for common colds, any hobby can logically be dubbed by mothers everywhere a 'Complete Waste of Time'.  After all, devoting energy into a pastime that does not return the favor comes close to skirting that insanity definition we are all familiar with.

Think about it:  I devote energy admiring Kim Kardashian's ass.  After doing so for however many years, is she going to show up at my door one day and offer a 'thanks a lot' blow job?  Of course not.  I don't play basketball.  Or bleach my teeth.

What, other than a secretive marital aid, does admiring Kim Kardashian's ass get me?

Nothing.

So why do we devote energies into ungrateful pastimes?

I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, but a wise man once said - and I am paraphrasing here, "You may as well distract and shield yourself from the universally inevitable conclusion that 'Life sucks and then you die.'"

Kim Kardashian's ass is, if nothing else, a distraction from the banal; the same as all of my other hobbies.  Yours, too.

"Hold on there, Anti-Grammar," I can hear the protests now, "I get more stimulation out of _____ as your wife does her vibrator.  Do not tell me _____ is a mere distraction!"

Being a good husband and father, raising our children so that they aren't self-centered little beasts, making a difference in the lives of anyone but myself - those are the areas that I choose to focus on.  Give or take a few commandments.

If I am to be judged by my hobbies, I may as well be judged by my admiration of Kim Kardashian's ass.

'Cause an interest in Captain Beefheart paints me hungry and weird.  And admitting an appreciation for Lucy Van Pelt gets me nothing but angry stares from the Snoopy crowd... the uptight bastards.