All the News That Isn’t

Internet Collapses Under Weight of Magic-Related Podcasts

Over the weekend, Internet users around the world experienced sudden and unexpected outages in connectivity as the World Wide Web, groaning under the weight of several thousand Magic-related podcasts, most with three or fewer episodes published, imploded and collapsed.

Mark Benner, of the Google’s Department of Crawling Around the Web and Figuring Out Where All the Stuff Is, says that the glut of podcasts overloaded the base Internet infrastructure, causing rolling digital blackouts lasting from several hours to days.

“There once were only a few Magic podcasts,” says Benner. “Our records show, however, that since January 2011, new podcasts began popping up at a rate of a few every month, then every week, then every day, and so on. By late September, we were averaging a new Magic: The Gathering podcast every 0.544 milliseconds, and this weekend, things just . . . came to a head. I’m not sure when and how we will restore functionality to users, but obviously the podcast proliferation will need to cease.”

Benner says that he’s not familiar with the game of Magic or what these podcasters are attempting to accomplish, but says that the propagation of the new ’casts appears to follow a predictable pattern in which, for every existing podcast, three or so groups of listeners decide that podcasting “isn’t that hard,” attempt to create their own podcast, and give up after recording, editing, and publishing an episode or two. Unfortunately, the short-lived, oft-abandoned podcasts perpetuate the cycle by each creating, on average, three more groups of wannabe ’casters, an explosive geometric growth cycle of the MTG-casting world that, as we have learned, cannot be contained by existing Internet structures.

Moms Bemoan Loss of Countless Mana-Colored Bed Sheets as MTG Players of All Ages Create Planeswalker Costumes

Every year, thousands of Magic players across the country attend Halloween parties in crudely made and silly-looking costumes inspired by various inhabitants of the Multiverse, thereby confirming the stereotype that Magic players are, in fact, the nerdiest fucking people on the planet.

Chief among them are Jace, the Mind Sculptors with bed-sheet hooded robes decorated with permanent marker, Vampire Aristocrats wearing black tee-shirt, skinny jeans, fangs, and a cape, and one-hundred-forty-pound Gideon Juras wearing hammered-out pie-tin breastplates.

Adam Goldberg, 17, of Long Island, New York, says he’s dressing up as Koth of the Hammer this year. He admits that it’s a bit of a stretch given his pasty white complexion and five-foot, four-and-three-quarter-inch stature, but he’s a die-hard red mage and always plays Red Deck Wins. “I have this red skirt and sash I made myself. I don’t know how to sew, so I just stapled the seams. It’s friggin’ sweet,” he says, winking, “and ladies love excellence.”

Innistrad Zombie No Longer Wants to Mindlessly Shamble; Dreams of Dancing on Broadway

New York, N.Y. – A member of one of Innistrad’s most prestigious hordes of zombies, named Steve—he asked that his last name be withheld, as he fears that other, more traditional members of his horde might ridicule or ostracize him—says that he is tired of lurching and stumbling around senselessly, and wants instead to pursue his deadlong dream of dancing on Broadway.

“It all seemed so glamorous and cool at first,” says Steve. “Who wouldn’t want to be a member of the Army of the Damned? After a while, though, I got tired of it. All we do is stagger around and moan, ‘Braaaaainssss . . . ’ Being Julliard-trained in many forms of dance—ballet, jazz, tap, you name it—the stumbling without rhythm gets really old, really fast. I mean, I’m a method actor! You don’t need to study Stanislavski or Strasberg to moan about brains. I tried to convince some of the others to spice it up a bit, learn some dance steps, but they weren’t interested. I just need somewhere to develop my talents, express myself.”

But what Broadway musical would want a zombie from Innistrad in its cast? With luck, says Steve, he hopes to be invited to join The Book of Mormon. “Those guys from South Park are geniuses,” he says.

The Llanowar Sentinel accepts news bulletins from freelance journalists. Send submissions to llanowar@gatheringmagic.com. Pieces will be edited for content and length.