You've probably seen one of those tv shows about folks, who clean up after the not so dearly departed. People without friends and family, who kick the bucket and quietly rot away for a while until somebody complains about the smell or some unpaid bills. And no, that's not what I did. So why am I bringing this up? Because at the end of these shows, you always see the dead guy's belongings, their whole identity, everything they ever had, as it gets piled up and chucked in a dumpster. Which creates a nice, dramatic effect, but it's not always how it happens. Okay, if the corpse has practically liquified and there's maggots all over the place, then that's probably how it happens. But sometimes people die in a less creepy fashion and they leave a whole lot of stuff in pristine condition. And no relatives.
Here's a few sad, ugly truths about the clothes and things people get through charity:
The biggest part of what's actually being donated by people is garbage. I'm not talking about how "the colour on that is so early '90s" or how it's got a hole or two. Donated clothes tend to be dirty, full of holes and in such a horrid condition, you wouldn't even wipe your ass with that stuff. To many people, these collections are just another special garbage can, just for clothes. Figues - there's one for glass, one for paper, why not have one for old clothes, right?
And the nicer stuff, which is being donated by nicer (or dead) people, doesn't always go to people who really need it. I have seen people showing up at the local welfare place once every week, filling as many plastic bags with free stuff as they could carry and the next day you'd see these things for sale at a flea market.
I may have taken a thing or two for myself when I helped out there. In my own defence, I did need them and I didn't sell them to anybody. One of these things, a dark leather coat, came from some creepy old guy, who owned a whole lot of creepy old stuff. A book titled "The Negro" was among his belongings, which compared black people to animals rather than human beings and even raised some ideas on how you might capture and tame them and train them for war. He was that kinda guy and it was probably that kinda coat. You know, loooong, dark, leathery, but it doesn't have any nasty insignia on it or anything. Judging by the guy's stuff, it must have belonged to a very bad person. Now it's mine.
I have also claimed an old lady's refrigerator. She died, she didn't leave anyone behind who cared for her stuff and it just so happened that I needed a fridge. There was a deer in it. And it was haunted. Well, it did seem perfectly harmless when I put the fridge in my bedroom. Yeah, I know. But there was no space in the kitchen and you cannot criticise having the bed, PC and fridge all in the same room until you've tried it for yourself. It's fucking awesome!
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| Claire and the fridge in my bedroom. At first, she was horny and everything seemed okay... |
One thing I like about England is how you can throw stuff away. Empty bottles, empty coke cans, just put them in the recycling bin and that's that. By German standards, this isn't overregulated enough. So they put a return fee on everything. So when you buy a can of coke, you pay for the coke and you pay an extra 25 Cents on top of that. You'll get your 25 Cents back when you return the empty can to the shop. At some point in history you probably had to fill in a form, as well. Anyhow - whenever you empty a beverage container in Germany, you hold on to that shit, so you can return it to the supermarket. I used to stack them on top of the haunted fridge.
Claire used to sit next to the fridge. There was a nice red sofa next to it. If you look closely, you can see about 2% of the sofa in front of the lower fridge door. She sat there. And cans, bottles and plastic bags would rain down on her for no reason. She told me the fridge hated her and it throws stuff on people, so we switched places and nothing happened. Not a single plastic bag.
Put Claire on the sofa and stuff would start falling on her. Sometimes I'd come back from the shower or a trip outside and she'd tell me about how fridge ghost threw things at her while I was gone.
Fridge ghost. It had a name now. I still loved that fridge, haunted or not. Look at my bed. Workout happened there. Stuff that makes you sweaty and thirsty. And we don't smoke. But how cool is it, when you can say, "Care for a coke?" afterwards and reach for that door handle and get ice cold refreshment without having to leave the bed?
I loved that fridge. I was sad when we had to leave it behind that fateful morning where we packed whatever things we managed to rescue on our journey to Nottingham. It never played any tricks on me. There's probably a perfectly logical explanation to the whole thing and why it only threw things at Claire. But how boring is that? I'll stick with fridge ghost.
And guess what? The other day, a computer game jumped off the shelf and missed Claire by an inch. "Guild Wars Factions". How interesting. Sometimes the lamp next to Claire's spot on the sofa starts to shake a bit when she sits there. Sometimes empty cans roll around the kitchen when nobody is in there. Did the ghost follow us? I'm excited!
Of course I don't genuinely believe in ghosts. I just like the idea. If I took a closer look at the shelf or the lamp, if I had looked at the fridge, I probably would have figured out what's really going on. But sometimes life is just a lot more fun when you make up your own explanations. So if there's random stuff flying around my house to freak out my partner, I'll go with ghosts. Because it's more fun that way.
In other news, I seem to attract more readers than I knew. If you're familiar with this blog, then you'll know I'm not a fan of the dungeons in Guild Wars 2. I may have compared a playthrough to an attempt at pleasuring a bear with sandpaper. In my magazine column. And they put it on the website, without telling me. And opened it for user comments. Then somebody showed me the result. Holy fuck.
I have learned a few things today:
- Sarcasm and sitirical text doesn't work online. Ever.
- The average 14 year old cannot tell a review from a column.
- People consider my column a "bad third party translation" of this blog. Hilarious.
In fact, one particularly annoyed user actually copied one sentence out of my blog, from god knows how many weeks ago, where I dare say that playing a dungeon on GW2 with my guild mates was "fun". Yet in my column I say the dungeons are shit. Cue the conspiracy theories! Oh and this!
Yes, I had fun playing some shit content with people I know and love. How that one sentence turned into "The English original of this article is so much better" and "I cannot believe you'd defend such a shitty translation" is entirely beyond me. How anyone could misread, misunderstand and misinterpret my blog in such a spectacular fashion just melts my brain.
So, once again, just for you, just to be perfectly clear: I fucking hate the dungeons in Guild Wars 2. And if you wanna know why, maybe you should actually read my fucking blog, all of the stuff about GW2, not just copy and paste one sentence, completely out of context, and tell people somebody was ripping off my blog, Google-translating it and secretly putting it on the magazine's website, thank you very much!
And while I'm already at it: Because I dare criticise the dungeons and how they work, because I actually dislike them and make fun of them, some people come to the conclusion, that I simply don't know what I'm doing, telling me to "L2P", how they hope I haven't been paid to write this shit and some other nasty things I don't care to bring up here. Because of my fucking opinion.
Funny. I had a level 80 toon in full exotic dungeon gear three weeks after release. I have two of them now. Because I don't know how to play and I have no fucking clue what I'm doing. That stuff just fell out of the sky and I picked it up, you know.
It's hilarious how some of you believe, in all honesty, you're oh so fucking awesome, incredible, the best of the best and anyone who disagrees with you must be a noob. Well, let me tell you something: Every fucking idiot can beat every dungeon on Guild Wars 2. That's how they are designed. The biggest of idiots will do so by constantly dying and respawning until they throw up. Which isn't the most elegant "tactic", but it actually works. A team of skilled players will do it without wipes. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good you are or how much you suck, everyone can do them. Even I can. And I'm a fucking noob and I don't know what I'm doing, remember? Hey, since you're already dissecting my blog, maybe you wanna go find the screenshots where I show off my dungeon gear?
Let me tell you something else: Playing dungeons, hard modes, killing bosses, coming up with strategies, is my fucking job. I've been writing guides about that shit when half of you were happily swimming around in daddy's scrotum. Just because you think the dungeons in a particular game are good and I think they're shit, doesn't mean I don't know how to play them, how to handle my class or how to handle basic mechanisms such as dodge moves. You get five fucking attack buttons per weapon. It's not fucking rocket science. You can beat dungeons that way? Well, congratulations - so can everybody else, you're not special. So why am I describing wipes, fails and general drama in a satirical column? The fact there are so many of you out there, who cannot actually figure this out and need an explanation, is what really makes me mad.
See, that's the fun thing about Guild Wars 2. It keeps telling people how awesome they are for finishing the easiest of tasks. Oh my god, you've followed a bunch of NPCs in your story quest and killed some zombies! You're so amazing! You must be the chosen one! Well, guess what? You cannot fucking fail. If you die, you just respawn. If you suck really hard, you may end up naked, but you cannot actually fail. It isn't that hard. So you're awesome for beating some quick 5-man-instances? Don't make me laugh. Get off your high horse - the days where people were impressed with your "endgame" gear are gone along with month-long 40 people raiding to complete a full set. And I don't miss them.
Don't get me wrong. I don't disrespect anyone for liking the dungeons and for having their own opinion. Lots of people enjoy the chaos, having no taunts, no predictable aggro management, no targeted heals. There's nothing wrong with that, just because I hate it. And, dungeons aside, I fucking love GW2. Why the hell do you think I'm constantly blogging about it? What pisses me off is people telling me I shouldn't be paid and I don't know what I'm doing, based on my personal opinion and one sarcastic column, which makes fun of the unpredictable chaos. Agree with it or don't. Don't be a dick about it.
-Cat
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