Square Root of Plus Christmas Plus... Plus, More Pony Card Stuff

   And, oh, right, this may technically count as a New Year's gift (though who gives those, really, other than mooning couples,) but also on my list of belated presents? (which I have not yet received but have also been alerted of?)

   A 2016 At-a-Glance.

   BOOOM, for the win, right there; love the stuffing out of those things. I know I'm not hipster very often, but I'm hipster where it counts.

   And, unrelated, but I also need a cell phone for school? Guess the whole, pager, thing didn't pan out...

   Onto the meat of this post then. I'd meant to write up more about the MLP CCG, but didn't have time to get to, and so, [sucks teeth,] I guess I'm going to do that. (And just to be clear, I did not actually suck my teeth just there; just thought it'd be a dramatically appropriate bit of nonverbal communication.)

   Kids like pics, yeah. Pics, see, pics get clicks. Don't you find posts much more compelling when there's something to look at besides words? It's like, oooh, a picture, see, they do care. Here's a pic for you.

Random epiphany of the day: I am a full-grown man.

   Didn't have any particular card to be proud of, seeing how I didn't score any foils or anything, but like I said there were two or three foals and, those are basically the same thing, right? Ask Alex, that's what he misread at first. Not even joking. Not even joking...

   So yeah that's what I chose to take my picture with.

   Like how MTG cards have differing colors of their expansion line symbols determining how much you could hock that crap for on eBay, Alex, looking over these cards, asked if there were some kind of symbol or way of determining the "rarity" of any given card. Rarity is a perfectly valid word for rarity, in fact the accepted word, for itself, but it's also the word for Rarity, so that made me hmm. I'm not sure whether it would have been better to actually have gotten a Rarity card in any of the three boosters, whether I'd be able to derive more snark or not from that... I think she's the only one of the Mane Six I didn't snag a card of, Friend card or Mane Character card or otherwise.

   But in answer to the question, turns out there's, I found in the lower right-hand corner, either a C or a U or an R to mark that, as part of the card's collector number (and Enterplay's website is telling me there are also URs and, on top of the Fs and fs and Pfs from each line, in the Equestrian Odysseys and High Magic lines, Super Rares and even "Royal Rares," exactly two in EO and three in HM. (The website, if you didn't click on the link provided yesterday for the pic source, is a wonderful resource, and, look, you're not only allowed but encouraged to print the rulebook out with its sample cards and play a sample game at home. Come and get your love.)

   What else is there, what else is there... I just love the Friend cards in this game. You really get a feel for every pony, even the ones you only see in the background. They've got names. They've got lives. And they'd still be willing to lend you a helping hoof if you just asked. Everything's just so loving and sweet, and everyone tries their very best, and it's okay to have differences in personality and opinion, we're still all friends and there's room for that in a perfect world and that's even part of what makes the world perfect, and, and, I am not kidding absolute sincerity mode I AM TEARING UP A LITTLE RIGHT NOW. 

   I just... I just need to step away from the computer for a bit.