I wish 14-year-old me could see me now, he’d probably think I was the coolest guy ever. I would play him in a game with it, alas it’s already off to her next destination, for appraisal and grading by experts, and then to a lucky owner at cost. Sealing and packing was quite an effort, and I think I’ve taken better care of this fake jewelry, than I have the real stuff I own/bought.



Don’t worry, faithful readers, my dorking out will start decreasing posthaste, as my venture into the illicit, high-risk world of Magic dealing subsides.

I’ve been spending this week working EBay like a stockbroker on….Magic the Gathering cards. I started playing in 1997 and stopped at the end of high school, and although I sold most of my cards then, I held on to the rarest ones, thinking that maybe they’d go up at about the rate of inflation. I didn’t have any of the so-called “Power Nine”, the most expensive ones, but I had a few decent choices. I started poking around the internets, looking for prices, after a friend of mine brought me into curiosity about the game again (his younger brother has been playing, and I’m a creature of nostalgia, after all).

Well, it turns out the secondary market has totally gone nuts since I last checked, with prices multiplying several times over the past 5 years. Some of my holdings went up 400%, which would be beyond impressive for a ‘real’ stock or bond (and I don’t mean 50 cents became $2 either, more like $20 to $80). Those “Power Nine”, have skyrocketed to unbelievable values. While any ‘investor’ could be sore about a missed opportunity for ‘growth’, this is different: if I bought these, at the very least they’d probably stick to their value, and at the very very least I’d have them for tournament play. Nobody told me instead of paying for college, I could just buy Magic cards and sell them a few years later.

According to what I’ve read, the game is still very popular worldwide, and continues to have a heavy following in Japan, in particular. I guess, kids graduate from Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! into Magic, and eventually they get a taste for the stuff from the days of yore. Hopefully this will keep the ‘market’ voracious, as I’m not selling just yet, but rather trying to ‘short’ on some picks. I always compared Magic trades to a stock market (after all, magazines, now websites, would have monthly pricing guides and hot/cold picks, just like brokerage analyst reports), but now I have the resources to play around with it a bit. Maybe all those episodes of Mad Money with Jim Cramer will finally be put to good use…

I like lavender, okay?!

Somewhere between Clifton and Totowa, NJ, I made a major life decision yesterday. As the details are more certain I’ll post about it here.

I just wish I wouldn’t make so many assumptions, cause sometimes they’re right, but when they’re wrong it’s always craptastic. Let’s just say, I don’t belong where I am right now, and I mean this in general. I denied it for years, even while headed there, but there’s no running from the truth any more.

I’m still figuring out what that sentence means, and what it applies to exactly. But I’m getting closer by the second! Look out.

PS: If this page looks crappy, do a Shift-Refresh, cause some background images need to get reloaded. Also, this means you’ve been to my site before, and that makes you awesome.

I come tired all of the time now, not even just whew what a day tired, but I want to go to bed right when I get home tired. I either really burnt myself out physically moving furniture/cleaning up this weekend, or I’ve got the latest disease making the rounds. Either way I’m not too pleased with this, being as how I MUST ACT NOW or risk awful consequences.

I think the colors here need to change, I’m bored with “That 70s Webpage”, so this weekend I’ll probably take care of that. I’ve put off too much cause of the above. Erg.

Everything will be better real soon, I just don’t believe it really can happen after so much time. Never before have I been in such need to organizize.

On Wednesday, the high here in north Jersey was around 70 degrees. I had to open a window in my room. Wearing a wool suit was nearly unbearable. I drove home in the sunlight, with the windows up, and it wasn’t because I had to evade the pushing of gale winds on the Turnpike.

Now, today (Saturday), I’m shoveling three inches of snow/ice/slush out of my driveway, so I can get to Lowe’s and buy salt to make sure nobody breaks their face on the front walkway. My arms feel like they’re going to fall off, because this wasn’t normal snow, but a layer of ice over slush/snow, with a layer of ice covering the ground beneath it.

What. The. Fuh.

Allow me to be serious for a moment.

Somebody I know has decided to quit smoking, after over two years. While she has been reluctant to do so in the past (because the methods that exist all have specific negative side-effects, or just didn’t work for her), her doctor told her about a new medication from Pfizer, called Chantix. It works by targeting the nicotine-craving parts of the brain directly. Others who had used it have told her the thought of smoking again actually makes them nauseous. She is optimistic that Chantix will work, where others have not.

http://mediaroom.pfizer.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=57

I myself went cold turkey many months ago, and it was no picnic. I compensated for the withdrawal by overeating, and gained a lot of weight as a result. Needless to say, I probably would’ve done it differently if I could do it over again.

So, if there’s anybody you know who’s been either trying or wants to try quitting, and have been skeptics of any other methods in the past, I’d say take a look into this. Everything I hear so far is very positive, the side effects are minimal, and we all know quitting now is the best thing you can do for yourself/everyone you know.

http://whyquit.com/pr/082506.html

This is a site that goes into details on Pfizer’s studies on Chantix, and how comparable it is to other quitting methods (it’s not entirely beaming, either, which makes me more inclined to believe it).

Additionally, there is the issue of affordability (those without prescription plans might be paying quite a bit for this). However, when you consider the high price of cigarettes today, the prescription will eventually be cost-effective.

I am doing pretty fantastic, thank you very much. Optimism for the future is all I needed, and after several large kicks to my face I think it’s finally coming about.

The agenda currently is:

1.) Secret project shh!!

2.) RSS Feed for the site

3.) Merge changes to professional site

4.) Read Mere Christianity by CS Lewis

5.) Finish anything else I’ve started but have not completed

6.) Clean out back room and move furniture out

7.) Search out a new or stinky couch

I just realized I might not have cable next Wednesday, when the episode where you find out how Locke gets paralyzed is going to debut. I never thought it’d come to this, where a television show’s occurence is disrupting me, even if but for a few seconds. How could this happen to me?!!?

From “You Don’t Know Jack” –

You think you know theme parks? You haven’t had fun `til you come to PHILOSOPHER WORLD!

Screw the Mouse! Forget the Mountain! Busch Gardens is for pussies! You want a theme park? Philosopher World is the place for you!

Enter Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (You may never come out!) Strap yourself into the fastest scientific yet secular perspective towards statecraft: The Mach-Three-avelli! Try the Utilitarian Ride: It gets you to the end of the ride, and that’s all that matters!

Every ride is a tabula rasa waiting to be strapped around your waist and grabbed onto for dear life! “You’ll never lose your absolute spirits with this much to do!”

St. Thomas Aquinas’ Log Ride! Ready to Go Karts! Hobbes’ Leviathan! Twirl yourself silly on the Hoses Spinoza! Find Thoreau in the Forestland Scavanger Hunt! Kids, try the new Buridan’s Ass Petting Zoo! One ride and you’ll be coming back for tons more!

“God may be dead but heaven is a place called PHILOSOPHER WORLD!”

I’m sorry to report I did not have the winning Mega Millions numbers, therefore I am now not a multi-millionaire.

But, I was hoping one of my tickets in particular would have come up, so I could be in the worst news story of the century (Yes, I am the first person to ever think of playing these):

Oh gosh, what a difference. All it took was a few rolls of duct tape and some elbow grease.


The only detriment is right now it does not work in Internet Explorer. It RANDOMLY decides to place divs at certain points on the page, and since float is ganny there, the sidebar floats wherever_it_pleases. Stupid stupid IE!


Well, I’ll figure that out, and everything else, some other time. It’s finally starting to look like spring out there, so this is no day to stay inside diddling with teh Internets.


Private P.S.: roundededges roundededges!!!

Have you ever been to ‘the Dog’? If not, go right now. Here’s a good start:


http://anightatthehothberry.ytmnd.com/


Here are my sites, made back when I just graduated from college and had too much time on my hands:


http://www.ytmnd.com/users/fxbx/


Go nuts out there.