The Shot is going to be pretty short today, I just got back from Canadian Nationals and I only have a minutes before I stumble upstairs for a long snooze. Before I do anything though, there’s something has to be said.
Though my editor may crease his brow or banish this sentence entirely, I think it’s safe to say that I am indeed sh*t. Not because of being a scrub or being a jerk or because I fill this column with left-wing political views (uh….free Mumia al-Jamal?), but because I am just so bad.
How bad? I don’t often show it, but I can be pretty bad.
Sometimes it pays to keep your mouth shut. I try to be a good strategy writer while simultaneously remaining somewhat entertaining, but when you have a lot of blank space to fill you sometimes pepper your work with stream of consciousness snippets that aren’t exactly”tech.” In fact, some of the things said are damn near criminal.
Check out this stupidity from my U.S. Nationals article:
“I might give this a try one of these days, though I know there are some changes I’d make – the one Soul Burn in the main seems pretty random, and so do the three in the sideboard. The better win condition is probably Millstone + Echoes.”
–Geordie Tait
The above passage would be a most effective argument were I to advocate my own euthanization. Death is a small price to pay if the alternative is to wake up each morning knowing I actually wrote that. I have it on good authority that three monkeys throwing their dung around could smear more astute commentary on the walls of their little monkey hut.
Given enough time and enough dung, of course. No monkey is a miracle worker. Honestly, I knew about that deck everything that having never played it had taught me… Which is to say, nothing.
I would learn only a few hours later that the one Soul Burn is very important, and the three in the sideboard even moreso. It’s all detailed in an excellent article by Brian Davis, who played the deck at U.S. Nationals.
This is a great piece of work, and I think if you read it, you’ll become a fan of the deck in question almost immediately. I sure became one – so much so that I decided to run it, with a minor change or two, at Canadian Nationals. Anyhow, there’s your recommended reading for the day. Click the link and don’t look back – you’ll learn a lot.
Nationals is a long story and it’s going to take most of the week to tell. I’ll start tomorrow or in a few days – it depends when the Ferrett decides to put my stuff up and in what order.
Until then, I have a bunch of things to do and I really should do them before. I have to delete about 700 Klez emails, take out the garbage, do some light cleaning, maybe do some laundry. On top of all that, no less an icon than John to the Shuler is pissed at me for running the B/R Sorcery deck and changing the name. Sorry, John – I thought”When Sorceries Attack” wasn’t my style, and instead named it after Bill Lumberg, the boss in”Office Space.” Call a cop.
Why”Lumberg”?
Well, does anyone here remember the scene from”Office Space” when Peter is having a nightmare about his boss (Lumberg) having sex with his girlfriend? That nightmare started with one chilling phrase, uttered by a co-worker during a conversation about the past relationships of his sweetheart, a waitress played by Jennifer Aniston:
“Well, Lumberg f***ed her.”
That one statement echoes back and forth in Peter’s mind, and he begins to take the view that his girlfriend has been somehow irrevocably soiled by her reported contact with Lumberg, the evil-face-of-corporate-life boss who makes Peter more miserable each day at work. In his mind, this statement turns from an innocent bit of office gossip into a full-scale condemnation of her immortal soul. (The kicker – in the end it turns out that her former beau was a different Lumberg.)
You have to see the movie to understand, so if you haven’t, rent it. There’s your recommended movie for today -“Office Space.” Then go and read the Brian Davis article linked above. It’s time well spent.
The point of all this? After a round of Magic, my friends will invariably ask me how I did. I thought it might be amusing if I were able to answer (using, of course, the same ominous, terrible voice in the nightmares of the hapless Peter Gibbons, the”Office Space” protagonist):
“Lumberg f***ed him.”
Of course, I didn’t do any better than Davis did with the deck, and even lost to two Psychatog decks, so if anyone dropped the soap during the constructed portion, it was probably me. In the end, Lumberg ended up giving me the business – a fact all the funnier when you realize the card that wrecked me all day is almost universally referred to as”Deep Anal.”
I’ll see you tomorrow. Meanwhile, scoot on over to the Sideboard and check out the coverage of my feature match, which was done by Josh Bennett, one of my favorite writers. My opponent had no cards in hand, I was swinging with Magnivore for the win next turn, and he had one turn to topdeck a burn spell to kill me. I was at one life. His draw? Go read for yourself.
Geordie Tait
[email protected]
Canadian Nationals Competitor 2002
P.S. : How long do you think it will be before Kurt Hahn calls me sh*t? You know it’s bound to happen eventually. I give it a couple of weeks. I mean heck, he’s got a point.