Sometimes I'm surprised that the symbolism treasure hunt in high school didn't kill my interest in literature. I had some pretty great teachers who, despite looooooooooving to hunt up hidden meanings, were also pretty rad about other things. What I hated the most was being in the Honors English class, and later AP English and I was one of the only students that didn't hunt for symbolism. I didn't analyse much. And it generally made me feel really uncomfortable to speak in class because I was surrounded by other students who would go on about symbolism this and deeper meanings that. It was incredibly intimidating.

I first played Munchkin something like nine or ten years ago. And I LOVED it. I got to play with a big group of friends that almost never get the chance to all meet up at once. The guy who taught us talked about everything in the game--but maaaaaay have glossed over the aspect of backstabbing to serve as a 'harsh lesson' later on down the road. It was an effective lesson, but it backfired a little--my best friend and I waited until he was level 9 and about to win, and then completely annihilated him. It's been so long I don't even remember everything that we did--but it must have been harsh because to this day he refuses to play Munchkin if both of us are present. He wasn't MAD or anything... he said later he was actually kind of impressed. And a little horrified.

Smurfs. I has them.

My brother's girlfriend sent me the blog post that t-shirt is inspired from. We spent ages the other day talking about alots. Thank you, Wil Wheaton. Now I know what I'm getting her for Christmas.

Yes. So much so that it completely obliterated my terrible Friday evening. Thank you, Wil: Murderer of Moods Most Foul.

I was more or less suckered into learning how to play Magic when I was in college. A couple guy friends told me they were part of this 'games club' and they met once a week with a mess of other people to play, well, games. And I thought 'hey sure, cool!' so I tagged along. All they played was Magic. ALL they played. I remember my brother trying to teach me once upon a million years ago--so I let them talk me through some stuff. People lent me decks. I didn't get a lot of it at first... but it was pretty fun, and everyone was really nice and helped me out. But my tiny card-playing heart will ALWAYS belong to Munchkin. The friend who taught me (and a couple other people) only played with us the once. Once my best friend and I got the hang of it, and the teaching friend screwed us over in the game... we made a rather sudden, silent, and ugly pact to take him down. Which we did. With gusto. Repeatedly. The first time he laughed with the rest of us, encouraged us, and was generally good-natured about it. That stopped after the seventh or eighth time we did it though. Sadly, our alliance fell apart when she stabbed me in the back later on to prevent me from winning. But that's half the fun of Munchkin. :D