The best blog in the universe: Snakes and Funerals

I'm gonna fly to Germany this week. Final goodbyes to my old man and all that. It's weird. A family-gathering which he actually won't miss. And he's not gonna take cigarette-breaks every ten minutes. In fact, he just stopped smoking a few days ago (he's been cremated).
58 years. Man. I was hoping to visit my grandparents around Xmas last year and then they both died within two weeks of each other. Was thinking about visiting my dad this year. BAM - dead. You know, a simple "no" would have sufficed.

I might joke around here and all, but the situation is actually quite grotesque. You get that phonecall, somebody tells you that your father has died and immediately you have to sign paperwork, organize shit, pile up money, there isn't a second to understand, let alone process what the fuck had actually happened. Somebody just died, but you have to function, keep things going and suddenly you're at a funeral and you're supposed to say something nice.

The really depressing thing is that I don't believe. I don't believe in a loving, caring god. I don't believe my dad is sitting on some cloud now, watching me as I write this crap. I don't believe there's any deeper meaning to this, I don't believe in heaven and I don't believe that my father will be reincarnated as a racoon in south east Asia or some shit. Ha! Say something nice!
I don't mean to mock any religious folks here. In fact, I'm almost a bit jealous of anyone who finds solace and strength in their faith. But I don't believe. If you don't know, you have to believe. That's the thing. We don't know whether or not there's anything after you die. My dad knows now. But as far as I'm concerned, the one, the only thing that matters is RIGHT THE FUCK NOW!

My dad knew about his condition and he didn't care. "When it happens, I'll be able to say that I really lived." Stupid, I know. But not entirely wrong. I hear so many friends, as well as my family, constantly whining, moaning, complaining about meaningless crap. The car is too old, the computer too slow, the flat is too tiny, the tv is only HD ready, the steak came from a discount supermarket, blah, fucking blah. Most of you have absolutely everything you need to live a happy life and you're so concerned about stupid, meaningless, materialistic crap, that you're blind to all the good things in your life.

My dad was only 58. Now he's in a handy little tin, portable, a nifty decoration for any mantlepiece. You might have another 50 years ahead of you. You might only have another day. Nobody knows. So stop fucking wasting your lives worrying about pointless crap like the resolution on your tv or how your car is three years older than you want it to be. Spend more time appreciating the things - and the ones - you love. Live.
That said - wouldn't it be nice if, when you'll die one day, you couldn't just say that you've truly lived, but if somebody else could say that their lives have been a little better, a little more fun, just because you lived? Stop wasting your lives holding grudges. Do something nice. Ladies - go on top every now and then. Make the best of whatever time you have. There might be less of it to go around than you think.

Hm. Maybe I just wrote that speech I need to come up with on Friday.

In other news, we've been to a reptile expo thingie today. Reptile breeders showing their most precious possessions to thousands of curious visitors - and selling quite a bunch of them, too. I usually like meeting reptile enthusiasts, but today was a bit scary. I have never seen so many morbidly obese people in Harley Davidson shirts in a single room before.
Okay, maybe that's a bit unfair. There were some fatties with Indian chiefs and/or howling wolves on their shirts, too. Lots of grunting, sweating, much more exposed flesh than anyone cared to see and a bunch of ugly, stretchy, washed-out tattoos. Frankly, the whole thing looked the way I'd imagine a gun expo to look like somewhere in Texas. Except with more snakes.

That said, I gotta hand it to the younger generation. I didn't even know that emos were still a thing, but to see adolescent boys covering half of their faces with dull, dyed black hair, eyeliner and black nail polish - I could almost hear the plagiarized sad poetry in the air. And maybe a bit of Nightwish. And then they go buy a baby ball python and name it Despair or something.
Surprisingly, nerds seem to be into reptiles now, too. The odd bunch of Marvel/DC weirdos, a few Breaking Bad shirts, some guy wearing an N7 shirt - fun stuff. I guess Claire and I fit that category, as well, so maybe I'm making fun of us both here, too. It's all good.

The weird thing about that show was how the vast majority of animals presented on there were incredibly rare, strange, special variations of otherwise dreadfully boring animals. The one thing they sold more than anything else was ball pythons. If you're unfamiliar with reptiles, they're usually considered a pretty easy snake for newcomers. They're small, incredibly shy (they curl up into a little ball when they're scared - hence the name. And they're ALWAYS scared!), absolutely harmless, friendly and inexpensive.
Don't get me wrong - I love ball pythons. We have one, too!

"Show me some Kiss videos!"

The thing is, bally pythons are to exotic pets what hamsters are to regular pets. They're cheap, easy to handle and pretty much fool-proof. And on that reptile show they offered rare breeds of ball pythons with unique colours and patterns for hundreds upon hundreds of Terran credit units. That's like spending 300 Quid on a Lebanese doberhamster or something.
Sure, they're rare, they're special, they're unlike any normal ball python, but by the end of the day, they're still small, harmless pet snakes with a rare, special pattern, which only a a specialist will recognize and appreciate. I can see how you'd want to buy one of those to breed it and sell the offspring for even more cash, but it's still a bit weird how a live animal can go up in value ten-fold based on the colour of its skin.

It got even weirder with some of the bearded dragons. Beardies are small, idiot-proof lizards. You know, for when you find geckos a little too tiny, squishy and scaredy. Guinea pigs. The regular ones were on sale starting somewhere around 20 monies. The unique ones sold for as much as 300. And they were so fucking ugly! Normal beardies are fun, spiky little lizards. The special-bred ones were huge, almost entirely slick and devoid of scales and had freakishly intense red or yellow skin. Like a candy-apple, which is slowly melting and rotting in the sun or something. 300 Pounds. For a small lizard, which may live for 7-10 years. I think I'd rather spend that kind of money on a Kobe steak or a really classy hooker.

But of course we didn't just go there so I could be a judgemental asshole. We were looking to buy a carpet python.

This guy, but about twice as long as you are tall.

They're intermediate snakes, which can grow to anything between 5 to 10 feet (3m), depending on what kind of carpet python you get.
And we saw a really huge, really impressive, calm, friendly, chilled-out carpet python five minutes into the expo, great price and everything. The thing that stopped Claire from buying it was when the guy selling her said he shot (!) pigeons to feed the snake. How weird is that? Get up, have a cup of coffee, maybe some toast, BAM go shoot a bird and throw it in the snake tank. Hoookay!

Found another amazing specimen, which was supposed to sell for 300 Pounds, which was a bit more than we were willing to spend. In the end, Claire found a tiny baby one for a mere 100 Quid and she got a freakishly detailed collection of statistics along with it.
Basically, the guy handed her a list, saying the snake was 91% diamond, 6% jungle and 3% coastal or something (all different types and breeds) and if you think that's over the top and specific, he actually offered a more detailed list with decimals and everything, saying you'll need a calculator for the exact numbers. Holy crap, this is some serious business!

So yeah, we got a female baby carpet python. Her mother measures an impressive ten feet, so we're about to raise a bit of a monster. The snake is very active, very animated, reasonably easy to handle and rather friendly, so far. It's just difficult to get decent pictures, because the little worm is so twitchy.