Saturday, 30 April 2022

Points in Case

Points in Case

Introducing the Fantasy Card Game, “Mothers: The Maddening”

Posted: 30 Apr 2022 08:00 AM PDT

Maybe you spend your days chasing bare-assed two-year-olds who have zero interest in learning how to use a toilet,  or wondering how to console your sobbing first-grader about his inability to grow wings. Maybe you're fantasizing about a world where children sleep in their own beds, where teenagers answer questions with more than a grunt and a look of disdain, and where women are afforded the luxury of showering long enough to shave both legs.

Don't you want to escape to a world like that? Even if only for a short time?

Now… You can!

From the company that brought your kids Magic: The Gathering, comes the fantasy role-playing card game just for moms, Mothers: The Maddening!

Players assume the role of tired wizards, casting spells and summoning creatures to do their bidding and to help fold laundry. You'll engage in strategic battles with other weary women to collect points that can be used toward a girls' night out, in which your husband will call no fewer than three times because he can't locate Mr. Chuckles the monkey and do you know where he is?

Experience a world where you'll rely on sorcery to make your wildest dreams come true and to make your teenagers bring the trashcans to the curb without a ten-minute diatribe. Compete in card-to-card combat with fellow moms whose socks also don't match. Use enchantments to magically refill the fridge with a never-ending supply of Gogurts or to silence an unrelentingly sassy backtalker.

Your goal? To reduce your opponent's life total to zero. (Which may feel kind of redundant given they've been doing the school drop-off in their pajamas and keep falling asleep on the couch before 8 PM.)

Start building your own unique deck with beautifully illustrated cards designed just for Mothers: The Maddening:

Nap of the Unicorn: When played, it induces sleepiness in even the most restless toddler.

Keeper of the Reliable Babysitter's Phone Number: Guarantees player will never miss another book club or friend's birthday party. May be played against the “Keeper of the Pediatric Specialist With the Three-Month Waiting List.”

Demonic Pact: Cardholder offers a pre-dinner ice cream in exchange for ending a not-of-this-world tantrum.

Scorn of the Teen: Unless you are holding an elusive “Show Your Mother Some Respect” card, prepare for an onslaught of eyerolls and sighing. I mean, more than usual.

Just as you so skillfully repurposed your infant's onesies into air plant holders, Wizards of the Coast boasts similar ingenuity. We've modified some of our traditional Magic: The Gathering cards for our Mothers: The Maddening edition. These cards include:

Eyes Everywhere: Particularly useful to moms of toddlers who have recently discovered that socks can, in fact, be flushed down the toilet.

Eternal Taskmaster: When wielded, minors must obey your every nefarious command, including loading the dishwasher, taking the dog for a walk, and bringing their hamper to the laundry room. Oh, the horrors!

Swift Death: When played, it's what your seventh grader will experience if she shows up to school tomorrow with her old backpack and not the cute floofy one (plus matching pencil case) all her friends are carrying.

Descent into Madness: Cardholder will have to go to the basement at 7:50 PM in search of old poster board for the science presentation your nine-year-old just informed you is due tomorrow. Can only be avoided if player is in possession of a “CVS Is Still Open” card.

New cards will be released on a regular basis through our expansion sets. Look for our “Breakfast in Bed Is Simply Not Worth the Mess” set, coming out in May, just in time for Mother's Day!

You'll find Mothers: The Maddening in the game aisle at Target, the wine section at Trader Joe's, or wherever Xanax is sold!

As Your Fortune Teller, I Will Tell You, a Dewy Young Thing, Who You’ll Be In Forty or Fifty Years

Posted: 29 Apr 2022 10:00 AM PDT

You will be a person who feels that little lift of happiness when you remember you have leftovers in the refrigerator for dinner.

You will be a person who, when Friday comes around and you have yet to make the first weekend plan, does a little happy dance in your head.

You will be a person who stops dancing when your partner announces that he's accepted friends' proposal that you meet for dinner and a concert by someone who sings and plays the flute.

You will be a person who, needing more room for books, never once thinks the words "bricks" or "boards."

You will be a person who talks to your dog.

You will be a person who also answers for your dog. Your dog will be clever, observant, occasionally snarky but always so grateful. Also, your dog will be very talkative.

You will be a person who, as you move through the produce department picking up peppers and berries and pears, tries to calculate how many millions of times you have bought groceries in your adult life. Numbers, you will decide, don't go that high.

You will be a person who cooks many holiday meals, but who has forgotten the thrill of being adult enough to cook a holiday meal.

You will be a person who, given the choice between attending an Eagles concert (similar to the Rolling Stones, the Eagles still will be touring in 40 or 50 years) and babysitting your grandchildren, will choose the grandchildren without thinking twice.

You will be a person who will never, never tell those grandchildren what you got up to when you were a dewy young thing.

You will be a person who entertains the grandchildren by teaching them the lyrics to every song on the car radio. ("You can't hiiiiide those lying' eyes…")

You will be a person who thinks about the one-bedroom college apartment you shared with three other people with retroactive horror. Half the horror will be due to the close quarters; the other half will be due to the bathroom sink that was backed up for weeks and nobody moved to get it fixed.

You will be a person who remembers very little about those three people and that crowded apartment, but you quail when you picture the filthy black bilge pooled in the sink.

You will be a person who remembers that the building's landlord lived, conveniently, across the hall from your apartment. And still.

You will be a person who thinks about the one-bedroom college apartment you had to yourself with more retroactive horror. You had an apartment, but you didn't own a vacuum cleaner. Also, you spray painted your refrigerator orange.

You will be a person who shudders to recall that random old guy—he was 30 if he was a day—who took you to dinner and then back to his apartment.

You will be a person who acknowledges, now that 30 seems hilariously young, how lucky you were that the dinner-and-apartment guy was fundamentally decent.

You will be a person who knows that your entire future was, during that evening, in his hands.

You will be a person who reflects that this was just one of many dumb risks you took—are taking, I mean—because young people take risks like older people take aspirin.

You will be a person who considers quiet evenings with a good book and a sleeping dog just about perfect. I understand that's your current definition of "dead." I foretell what I foretell.

You will be a person who reads the diaries you kept when you were dewy and young while murmuring "Yikes" over and over. Yes, I see the current you is miffed to be told that the future you thinks you were earnest but silly, plucky but idiotic. The future you snorts to think you dare to be miffed.

However, the future you is still appalled at some of the dumb things you're doing. Try to remember that, dear, when you leave this tent.

Signs You Are Watching an “Accurate” Movie About the Middle Ages

Posted: 29 Apr 2022 05:00 AM PDT

  1. There is dirt everywhere, all the time. At no point is anybody completely clean (not even the rich people). Any “accurate” movie about the Middle Ages must look absolutely filthy.
  2. Everybody from the poorest serf to the most glamorous king has appalling table manners. Even in the fancy banquet scenes, people chuck bones over their shoulders, beer gets sloshed all over the place, and there is not a napkin in sight. Chivalry and courtly behavior are for those “inaccurate” movies.
  3. Disease, like dirt, is absolutely everywhere. Black Death and leprosy for everyone!
  4. One of the Vikings in the movie will eventually make a remark along the lines of, “Wouldn't it be crazy if we all, oh I don't know, started wearing horned helmets or something?” (They didn't, obviously, but it wouldn't be an “accurate” movie about the Middle Ages if the script didn't smugly point that out as though historical Vikings thought horned helmets were even an option.)
  5. Rape is happening all the time. People are ok with it. After all, it was a different time. We've come such a long way since the Middle Ages! Things are much better now!
  6. Either a) someone makes a reference to the Earth being flat; or b) someone who suggests that the Earth might be round is loudly derided and ultimately declared insane. It's true that the ancient Greeks knew the Earth was round and that this knowledge circulated widely in the Middle Ages, but we can't let historical facts get in the way of “accuracy” now, can we?
  7. A monk or nun is doing something nefarious.
  8. Anybody who dies during the course of the movie does so either because of illness or in a super violent way. Bonus points for “accuracy” are given for any death scenes featuring impalement.
  9. Nobody is expected to live beyond the age of, like, 30. Any woman who lives past 30 is suspected of witchcraft (unless they're rich). At least that's the excuse the producers will give for having cast only one woman older than 30 in this historically “accurate” movie…
  10. There's a lot of public urination, defecation, fornication, etc. Nobody bats an eye at any of this. We have to see this at least five times during the movie in order for it to be labelled an “accurate” portrayal of medieval life.
  11. People are easily astonished and delighted by simple magic tricks like pretending you can separate your thumb from your hand and then reattach it. People were very simple back then, you see.
  12. Someone somewhere is invoking droit de seigneur, jus primae noctis, or any other famous and totally not-made-up medieval rule that supposedly entitled a lord to sleep with his subjects' wives on their wedding night. Obviously, this is for reasons of “accuracy” and has nothing to do with the desire to titillate the audience with sexual violence.
  13. There's a lot of public humiliation, torture, and execution. People are ok with it. In fact, they think it's a great form of entertainment and a fun day out for the whole family.
  14. Since this is an “accurate” movie about the Middle Ages, the only colours you'll see are different shades of mud-brown. Blue is “muddy blue.” Red is “muddy red.” Purple, however, is purple. Just kidding: it's “muddy purple.”
  15. All the wizards, fairies, and elves are white.
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