Perspective

A friend sent me a rather handsome amount of money via paypal today. People do that every now and then, asking me to buy them stuff on Steam, which is not available in Germany. So I asked him what he wanted me to buy and he said pizza. With double cheese.

Certainly one of the cooler Xmas presents I have received so far. Wanna know why he did it? He told me he had a great job, a roof over his head, a great life and nothing to wish for and he wants his friends to be happy for Xmas, as well. How cool is that?
When I was a kid, my parents used to be rather rich. At some point we had four (!) cars, one of which was for the cleaning ladies. Yes, plural. And my family was never satisfied. With anything. My stepmother is the kind of person who used to drive around in a golden (!) Mercedes with fake labels on them, suggesting the engine was even bigger than the one her car actually sported. Make-believe. Show off, impress the neighbours, that kinda thing. Look at how rich we are!

Well, you know how it goes. Big crisis, recession, everyone buying stuff they couldn't afford and not paying their monthly rates and all that - my parents lost most of their stuff and now they have to live like common riffraff. One car instead of four, a nice, big flat instead of a massive house, the steak comes from Aldi, that kinda stuff. Middle class. Yes, German Aldi sells steak. Not just beef. Ostrich, too! And they're oh so fucking miserable! Because it isn't horse meat. You'd think they live in cardboard boxes and eat out of garbage cans when they have absolutely nothing to worry about. The last Christmas I actually got to celebrate with my German family consisted of twenty minutes of eating, a massive argument about Wham's 'Last Christmas' (my stepmother plays it every year, everybody fucking hates it, but god forbid if anyone dares say something), my old man disappearing to get back to World of Warcraft and everyone trying to get home rather quickly. I got a pair of underpants and a bottle of Tabasco.

This is the third year I get to celebrate with the Bear's family since moving to the UK. We'll get there in a second hand Volvo. Which replaced a second hand Kia. Which replaced no car whatsoever. We'll be celebrating in a living room, which is smaller than my parents' old garage. We might end up playing some old video games or watching dvds. No BR. No HD, not even HDReady and certainly no 3D. And nobody is bitching. Nobody is whining about how the car is too cheap and too slow, about the telly being too small and too old, about how there's no room for everybody or some shit, nobody runs off to play MMORPGs in the middle of a fucking family gathering. There might be alcohol and jokes about German sausage and I'll do whatever I can to get out of any card and/or board games they might decide to play. And I'm gonna have a fucking good time.

I'm also gonna be fucking tired. It's 4am. I gotta get up in 5 hours. I only got up at 4pm today. I'm self-employed, I like to work nights and sleep in during the day. Now I'm supposed to be awake and reasonably presentable by 9am. The horror!
And I fucked up the one thing I'm supposed to be good at: Cooking. Even though we're invited to Xmas dinner and everything, I like to cook up some sauce for all the meat and stuff. So I went and got a whole lot of nice ingredients. Wine, tomatoes, basil, peas, carrots, onions, chicken stock... I don't know what the hell I was thinking. It seemed awesome in my imagination, but the final result started off being terribly bland and boring, then went to tasting weird and finally tasted and even smelled awful.

Great. The one thing the family around here talks about. My cooking. I cook stuff, people eat up. Heck, I can cook weird local stuff like cottage pie, which I'll admit isn't the most complicated thing on the planet, but there's never anything left when we have guests over. A few hours from now, I'll show up with absolutely nothing and tell people I fucked it up. Critical failure. I rolled a one. Twice in a row. A ninth circle pastamancer fucking up. Man I can't wait for 2012 to be over!

Well, I guess we all have our awful moments. Except when it comes to stuff we were born to do. Wrapping presents, for instance. I can wrap any kind of shit and it instantly looks good. It's a German racial ability. We get born with the ability to wrap gifts. Don't get me wrong - they look shit by German standards, but they're cooler than most English presents you'll ever see under a tree. I don't know how or why. I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing, but they always end up looking all neat and tidy. Or like giant pieces of wrapped candy or some shit. Thanks, genes! I mean, hey, I could be the lead singer in a world famous band or be a successful race driver, but having the ability to wrap fucking Xmas presents is really handy, as well. Sigh...

We'll probably get a ton of chocolate tomorrow. Or money. Or maybe that thing I hope for. I'm pretty sure there won't be any fucking underpants. I don't really know what the message was, there. I mean... why would you.... how... I don't get it. "You look like your balls are cold. Try some of these!" Well, that's not so bad, I suppose. Unless... "I want you to touch my present with your penis." If you don't dare say it, then a pair of boxers would be a reasonably safe bet. I'd much prefer to rub my cock against a brand new Playstation 3, but gift horse and all that.

Bleh. Writing down random thoughts. So girly. Should rename this blog to 'Dear diary'. Or maybe 'Kitten's log'. Damn, I wish STO really gave you an impression of what it's like to captain your own starship. They're showing endless re-runs of TNG these days and I'm pretty sure the basic idea behind many episodes is to make people think, "What would I do in this situation?". For me it's more of a, "I'm so fucking glad I don't have to do any of this shit at my job" kinda thing. How random.

Kitten out.