I have been learning how to play Magic the Gathering for quite a while now, but sometimes I get distracted by the horrible names on the cards and then have a hard time keeping track of what’s going on in the game. Usually they are just silly—Fleshbag Marauder , Infectious Bloodlust , Macabre Waltz and the like—but every once in a while a card enters your hand that is trying way too hard and doing everything wrong, like the Cruel Sadist card:

This is very entertaining to me because they use “sadist” as if it’s a neutral word that requires further categorization; like if you’re a pronounced sadist you could still be invited to join a Christian book club, run your own care center for the elderly, or succeed in adopting a child. Imagine how personal introductions might read if this were true: “Hi, my name is Chad! I am six feet tall, I enjoy listening to music, I play guitar, I like to program computers, and I am a sadist. Would you care to go to a Hawaiian barbecue with me?”

The name also implies that there are different flavors of sadists: “good sadists” and “bad sadists”—or I guess in this case, “kind sadists”. A kind sadist must be a person who brings the victim flowers before running over his dog and smashing his fingers in a car door seventeen times.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like Wizards of the Coast are reaching a bit. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of these days they start releasing cards with names like Psychotic Psycho, Badgering Badger, or Mad Madman. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if these cards already exist.