Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Whooo!!!

.:Today's LSS:.

This goes out to Team TX, if only because of the title...

You Can Do Magic
by America

never believed in things that I couldn't see
I said if I can't feel it then how can it be
No, no magic could happen to me
And then I saw you

I couldn't believe it, you took my heart
I couldn't retrieve it, said to myself
What's it all about
Now I know there can be no doubt

You can do magic
You can have anything that you desire
Magic, and you know
You're the one who can put out the fire

You know darn well
When you cast your spell you will get your way
When you hypnotize with your eyes
A heart of stone can turn to clay
Doo, doo, doo ...

And when the rain is beatin' upon the window pane
And when the night it gets so cold, when I can't sleep
Again you come to me
I hold you tight, the rain disappears
Who would believe it
With a word you dry my tears

You can do magic
You can have anything that you desire
Magic, and you know
You're the one who can put out the fire

You know darn well
When you cast your spell you will get your way
When you hypnotize with your eyes
A heart of stone can turn to clay
Doo, doo, doo ...

And If I wanted to
I could never be free
I never believed it was true
But now it's so clear to me

You can do magic
You can have anything that you desire
Magic, and you know
You're the one who can put out the fire

You know darn well
When you cast your spell you will get your way
When you hypnotize with your eyes
A heart of stone can turn to clay
Doo, doo, doo ...

You're the one who can put out the fire
You're the one who can put out the fire
You're the one who can put out the fire ...


.:The Top Ten People I'm Most Grateful To This Year:.

Let's start this off.

10. Team TX: I have to say that being a part of Team TX has certainly helped my Magic career along, enabling me to win a tournament this year and figure past the eliminations of quite a few others. That, and the fact that the guys on my team have been great company all the same, from whatever kind of conversations we'd find ourselves in...

I highly doubt you guys would be able to read this, but thanks. You've definitely made my Magic career more successful and even more interesting.

.:Saturdate:.

I think Pomelo's post about it captures the moment a lot better, but needless to say, the both of us are teh suck at bowling. I got a score of 72. She got a score of 35. Those are both baaaaad scores. Heh.

.:The Tournament Recap:.

I really don't feel like writing a complete report, so I'll just stick to talking about highlights that happened during the whole mess.

I came in fourth, and I guess I should be grateful I got that far. I fell to Cheng's Mishra's Workshop deck, which is pretty much one of my nightmare matchups, to begin with.

In any case, congratulations to Mike Juan, who then beat Cheng in the finals with his Golden Dragon deck. In the middle of their match, we were talking about random CBR stuff like who would win between Darkseid and Thanos, or who would win between Superman and Captain Marvel. Or the Flash versus Superman, among other things.

To get to the tourney, I hitched with Quiccs, and we then hitched with Dave and JT after we met them in the Fort. On the way there, we were talking about using toenail clippings as Spirit tokens or Melokku tokens that we can flick when they take lethal damage. Heh. And then memories of childhood came along when we started talking about that age-old threat to kids who refuse to behave: Ibibigay ka sa Bumbay, gagawin kang biskwit. Talk about being politically incorrect, but I suppose it worked. I can imagine how many kids refused to carol in front of an Indian's house in Manila...

So en route to the tourney, we picked up Paolo Go, and it turns out that there are turning out to be a lot of people going for a PSP now. Amusingly enough, even Mondu's going for one, himself.

So we got there, and it looks like Mike was having a clearance of sorts, so there were so many giveaways being handed out that we couldn't even keep track of it anymore. From stickers to dolls to jackets to handbags, just wow.

Afterwards, we were then playing a few games of Magic, and the tournament was going fairly well. It was amusing how I finally won against Ann, considering it was a Sui black versus Doomsday matchup that I was liable to lose to for the most part. The match I had against JT, on the other hand, was nothing short of exciting. I was down to one life, and I had to roll for Mana Crypt. I won the roll, then comboed out on that turn. It was definitely a nail-biter... heh.

In any case, afterwards, I then had a very nerve-wracking third game against Paul, who was running UW Fish. I was doing my combo, then in the middle of it, and en route to a massive Mind's Desire, he cast Gilded Light, which prevented me from targeting him until the end of the turn. So I continued the combo, replayed stuff from Yawgoth's Will, bounced my Necropotence, then promptly cast Time Walk to take another turn. I then wound up with nine storm the next turn, and won as he used Force Of Will against me twice. I couldn't use the Beacon kill because it was out of the game thanks to my discard off of Necro.

Anyways, here's how I pulled that off...

Brainstorm, Dark Ritual, Black Lotus, Lion's Eye Diamond, Ancestral Recall. Paul counters that. Then Cabal Ritual, Chromatic Sphere, drew up and cast Duress. Paul responds with a Gilded Light. At nine storm, I cast Mind's Desire. It's ten copies of the spell, and there was a Mystical Tutor, a Brainstorm, and a Yawgmoth's Will among the cards flipped. I replayed Rituals and other stuff left and right, just so I have the Chromatic Sphere in play, a Brainstorm in hand, and a Timetwister in hand as well. One of my Brainstorms from the 'yard yielded Demonic Tutor, and I used it to fetch Time Walk, then cast it. My opponent's locked down because he tapped out with a Defense Grid in play. I cast Doomsday, drew one card off Necro, then I bounced Necro to my hand, and then ended my turn.

Next turn, I cast Brainstorm, drawing Tendrils, Dark Ritual, and Doomsday. I cast the Ritual, cast a Cabal Ritual in hand, then cast Doomsday with B floating. I was at 4 storm. I then used the replayed Chromatic Sphere to draw the Brainstorm, then cast it, drawing Dark Ritual, Cabal Ritual, and Duress. I then cast the two Rituals, putting me at 7 storm. I then cast Duress, then cast Tendrils of Agony, winning me the game with 9 storm.

At one point in the tournament, things got exceedingly funny because other than the requisite Christmas songs like “Miss Kita Kung Christmas”, there was also the fact that someone asked Mondu what his real name was. It was actually “Roderick”, and we never let him hear the end of it... heh. Roderick. He shouldn't have told us about that... I was ribbing him so many times from ribbing him about his name to ribbing him about his age, and it was just crazy.

And yeah, they had a buzzer ballpen during registration. I think it definitely fooled a lot of us... ah, well.

Perfect way to end the year for us Vintage players, I guess.

.:Hurricanes And Homosexuals:.

I don't know what it is about religious conservatives, but they seem to consider homosexuality to be the worst sin imaginable, as they blame just about anything that goes wrong in the world with them.

Hurricane Katrina? Homosexuals. AIDS? Homosexuals. Pedophilia? Homosexuals again.

I would've been laughing if only it didn't screw them over. The inanity is clear, because there seems to be this amazing selective amnesia being brought about when gay people come into play. Religious conservatives would say that gay people are “an abomination” according to the Bible, but then, would dismiss as “inapplicable” other segments of the same book they're quoting from (Leviticus.), such as being put to death for not observing the Sabbath, or laws on what is and is not kosher.

It's sad that in a progressive world, something that is supposed to help us transcend humanity, religion, instead discriminates against a group of people.

The Catholic church essentially put the blame on homosexual priests as being behind the horrible spate of pedophilia early this year. It's sad to point out that such an argument is not true: pedophiles are not homosexuals. It doesn't matter if their quarry are young boys, they are not automatically homosexual because of it. To blame homosexuals for it, and to ban entry of homosexuals into the priesthood, is to clearly ignore that all priests, regardless of sexual preference, are supposed to be celibate, so what does it matter what their preference is?

In fact, is it even still a preference? There's enough research to suppose that a lot of it has to with genetics, to be honest. So by that logic, shouldn’t we now suppose that it's the doing of the One who made this genetic setup possible? Of course not. I certainly wouldn't say that. But the fact that such a notion is there should already be proof that we shouldn’t be discriminating on the basis of sexuality. We're not supposed to discriminate against somebody because of their racial makeup, or because of even their religious preference, so why should sexuality be any different, especially when it's clearly something that can be tied in to genetics?

It's positively retarded how conservatives just assume homosexuality is an abnormality that can be cured. It's not a disease. It's not a conscious choice someone just makes. Which of us straight people can actually say we made a conscious choice some time ago to be straight people? It doesn't work that way for us. Why should it work that way for them?

I honestly have no idea where this rambling is leading to, but I just wanted to decry what I felt had to be decried. I hope I made some sense... heh.

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