Why James Lileks won't play

In today's Bleat, James Lileks gets to the real reason he's not willing to play Pokemon card games:

We got bales of paper in various form, a few Pokemon cards (I have made it clear I will not play the card game, because I do not understand the first thing about it. Seriously: Scrofulux is a psychic Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Dragon Master Platinum Level 90 Pokemon. Powers: can release horrible odors, give other Pokemons psoriasis. When played, the Scrofulux cannot wake a sleeping Pokemon but can turn a groggy Pokemon into a sub-level Anti-Pokemon Water Pokemon whose powers have a negative –20 effect on all subsequent cards played by the person on your left if their least powerful Pokemon card was purchased when you begged for 20 minutes on the way to the store in a high, singsongy whine, UNLESS the card has a shiny foil picture, in which case all play ceases while everyone looks at the picture because it’s cool and then you forget the game and swap doubles.)

Victor tried to get me to play the various -mon card games when he was a pre-teen. I couldn't get the handle on them . . . and I used to spend hours and hours playing complex wargames with arcane and mind-numbingly detailed rules, charts, tables, and matrices. Map sheets that covered several tables, and hundreds or even thousands of little printed cardboard unit counters (each with a plethora of numerical values to track). Clearly the ability to soak up arbitrary complexity and incomprehensible names peaks at age 8.