The new Pokemon Trading Card Game expansion set, Astral Radiance, hits stores May 27. Or May 23. Or this past weekend. Somehow these things find their way into certain stores ahead of official release dates as “pre-releases,” a phrase somewhere between a Buddhist Koan and an oxymoron.

It’s a little bit confusing to me when exactly these cards, of which my son is already enamored, will be available. Oh, you can buy them now and we have. They’ll certainly take your money for a little bit of cardboard. But somehow they don’t become real for a couple weeks, real as in their value in online games or as official currency in the world of Pokemon. They’re not really Pokemon cards; they’re just pieces of cardboard until the gods of Pokemon bestow their virtual blessing.

Get it?

Me either.

Once again I’m a little too literal and a little too 20th century for this world.

Better get my eight year old to explain it to me.

Again.