The Trading Card Post

"Being silly is like a present we give each other," I said the other night, at dinner, as I was making faces, and talking in an outrageous French accent, with a napkin on my head, brandishing a teeny spoon as a weapon.  Yeah, I need to work on my dinner table behavior.

I have noticed that three of my last four posts have been on the more serious side.  I mentioned once, I'll look it up here in a sec twice, once in a post called Daddy Dooby from last Christmas season and again, most recently, in one called Turn-Around-Bob, that my posts here at ihopeiwinatoaster often reflect my mood and I am, well, moody.

Some people are able to change their moods, at will, themselves... not me.  But, I try.  I utilize all the traditional tools like The Serenity Prayer and gratitude lists; affirmations and daily devotions; beer and wine; weeping and yelling.  Recently however, on a rather obscure and new blog which I'll link up for you some other time, 'cause it's serious and I don't want to be serious today, I was challenged to "raise my thoughts, not my voice."

I like that.  It really seems to help.  So I am trying to be more cheery and less dreary and, as a consequence I will make you suffer through some stoopid stuff my kids do.  It's either that or put stuff on my head and take pictures of it and post them, which wouldn't serve the mission of my little bloggy thing here.  (I wonder if the domain name iputstuffonmyheadandtakepicturesofit.com is taken?)

I mentioned just the other day that the boys like Pokemon cards.  I had nothing to do with it.  They traded perfectly good baseball cards and football cards for them, on the bus, with bigger kids, thugs.  Anyway, what you need to know is that they do not understand how to play Pokemon.  Seriously, clueless.  Also, they play a game called Wizards101 on the computer.  A.  Lot.  Too much?  That has not been determined.  In that game they are pretty up to speed, honestly, they get it and play it fast and hard.

Bothy games score similarly and health and food and speed and spells and such are determined in both by cards.

So naturally this is what has happened:

Yep, they make their own cards and play some sort of mashup of the two games and there are hundreds of these, everywhere.  The above is just a bunch of little ones I made a collage of on the scanner.  I could have done that four, at least, more times.

I am pretty sure this was a prototype but it'll still shock the shit out of you:

Some are eerily similar, maybe the same dude in different stuff, "sometimes they revolve, Dad, from what they were, before... They usually get better or something like that."  Right, Darwin's Theory of Revolution, Natural, uh, Direction...

Sometimes they're in color, special editions, no doubt:

Sometimes they are really, really odd:

My secret kid-to-grownup decoder ring translates this as "Sam in rain storm."  I thing it needs an upgrade because I know for a fact that there is no Sam in this game; Rekingball, yep; Zaneoktgongy, yep; Spinner, Spik, a Zooose, a Plattapud, yep, a Plattapoop, yep.  No Sams.  This card puts the "game in a minion storm."  Good Lord, how awful is that, a minion storm?

Sometimes they are very detailed and sophisticated:

 

Sometimes, not-so-much:

 
However, AX here is the title character in what is perhaps a new game in development.  It's nicely packaged:

And it comes with thirty-plus cards:

There are many more of these, scattered no doubt under things, mixed in with other toys, in notebooks and sketch books (as a matter fact there are several in their sketchbooks in the truck), and honestly there are probably a lot of them in the landfill.  The output of these has been, and is still, enormous; weight-worthy.

As always, I want to remember this little phase of their life, which is why I put this together, but in so doing I have reached a deeper, more profound conclusion:

Nicholas Oilbreth is gonna get his her ass whupped by Zachary Wildsinger.  I mean, he's  oddly, she is only a level twelve and Wildsinger there is a level seventy-seven for chrissakes.  It's not even a fair fight.  And if life and health are the same stat, then Wildsinger has 3,032 versus 980 for Oilbreth, she's doomed.


Well, now, look at that, I forgot one image.

Sometimes they are named Nork and they steal your heart away:

Thanks for playing.


From Marci's '... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ...'

"ARGH! Gravity beat me again!"

Oh, I hate that...