The Asylum Blogs Featuring Paul Andrea

Mea culpa: forgetting people's names is a serious weakness of mine, and when I mess up it leaves me feeling embarrassed. People who know me well might be shocked to see me admit this. I have crafted my mind into an extensive database for facts, figures and trivia on a plethora of subjects. I'm usually daisy-chaining tasks one after the other to accomplish what I need to each day. Therein lies the rub. My mind gets so preoccupied with other matters that I often miss out on what's in front of me, foremost of which being remembering someone's name. Given this problem is shared by many, we are often tempted to pass off screwing up someone's name as trivial. However, such mix ups leave people's feelings more affected than you may suspect. A person's name, in their own mind, is their identity, and their very sense of who they are and their place in this world ties directly to that name. By forgetting a person's name, you (subconsciously, and without any ill wi...

So you doubted the selling power of Final Fantasy, huh?  Hate to break it to you chum, but this series absolutely commands the market, thanks not only to its nostalgic legacy as a technologically groundbreaking series of video games, but also its legion of memorable heroes and villains struggling for supremacy of the fate of their distinctive worlds.  Ready to see Cloud and Tifa strike back once more at the evil Sephiroth? They're all here, as well as countless other characters and set pieces exactly from your favorite Roman Numerically numbered adventures, exactly as you remember them. Just as importantly, these cards aren't just pretty, they're potent. We're talking game-changing, upending multiple formats level potency.   Take the card Tifa Lockheart, a fairly innocent looking 2 mana drop based on the beloved supporting character from Final Fantasy VII. She's a 1 power/ 2 toughness trample green creature that has the landfall ability "whenever a lan...

Roll your eyes to the sky for me if you know this expression - "Think outside the box." Of course you've heard this one. Anybody who's worked on a tricky job or found themselves stuck in a rut on a school project knows it by heart. It's just a quick, easy, maybe even trite way to say "Use your imagination and find a way this hasn't been done before."  No problem, right? It's just a stupid box, and I can imagine myself jumping out of it pretty easily. Sounds simple, Hell, it even rings TRUE. The human imagination is so vast we can't even define its boundaries. Of COURSE the solution lies in my imagination.  So why, after applying this conventional wisdom, would we still run into roadblocks?  The trouble with the expression, dear reader, is one of scope. The Box, which simply stated refers to "the way things have been done before," covers an incredible amount of experience. Over 5000 years of recorded history. So many human beings, al...