My first real funeral today. I've been to some great... grand aunt's or whatever funeral when I was a small kid, but I didn't really know her, the whole thing was just a bit creepy and mostly boring and nothing that really moved me or stayed with me for a very long time. Well... and today they put my father in the ground. Or his urn, anyway. How weird. I thought someone would get to take it home, scatter the ashes or something, but apparently urns are buried over here. Hm.
My father was not a religious man. Left church and everything, but forced me into the whole Confirmation ceremony against my will when I was a teenager, the bastard! Heh! So, no clerical speeches or anything, no singing and organ music and some people just said a few things here and there, they played some of my father's favourite tunes and... well, as his eldest son, I couldn't exactly get out of this one. Godzilla knows I wanted to! His own sister and one of his brothers refused to speak. They didn't know what to say. Long story. Very little contact for a very long time, some unresolved stuff, that kinda thing. I had to. And... well, if you're somewhat familiar with this blog, then you'll know how I feel about my father. Somebody once said it doesn't matter how hard you try or how badly you want to avoid fucking up, your kids will eventually blame and/or hate you, anyway. I don't know about that, I didn't hate him, but he sure as fuck didn't try. He cared in his own weird way, which I'll probably never fully understand or appreciate. Maybe one day, when I'll be a little oder and wiser, had more time to think.
Everyone had their little notes, printed, written speeches, it was all a bit stiff and... well, you can probably imagine. Funerals, right? I had my own little note when it was my turn. I just stood there, petrified. They just had to play "Who wants to live forever" right before my turn (macabre, huh?) - there were fourty, fifty people, half of which were family members I haven't seen in a decade or more. Or folks who didn't exactly part on good terms. And you're supposed to say something nice about your dead father.
I looked at the note, shook my head, laughed a bit and just rolled up the whole damn thing into a little ball in front of everybody and said, "Fuck it." Well, the German equivalent, obviously. And that's when some people just stared in shock and others were getting ready to drag me away, because they already feared for the worst. Weeeell... I may have a bit of a reputation.
Then I spoke up. And I fucking killed it. Look... I don't wanna repeat all the crap and the thoughts I've already written down on this blog in the past few days, but that's basically what it came down to. I just spoke, I didn't read anything, and god fucking dammit did it feel great to swear and cuss in church and... hey, let's not go through the whole damn thing again. Just read the older entries, that's why they're here. I didn't go with the angry, hateful one, of course, but that's all part of the grieving process, I had to get it out of my system and I'm leaving that on here.
Whole thing only took a few minutes and at the end of it my step brother started clapping. Long story. We used to be really close and eventually fell out over something entirely trivial. Haven't talked ever since. I tried, he wouldn't respond, we were all a bit messed up, difficult times. He clapped. Then somebody else joined in. And a few others. Before the end of the day just about every visitor approached me and said they were really moved and impressed by what I said. Even one of my uncles, my dad's little brother, who couldn't get himself to speak up, came to me and said he was grateful for what I said, because it felt like I spoke for everyone, said what everybody felt and it was honest and came from the heart and... hey, I'm gonna stop going into this any further now. What I'm trying to say is, it really is possible to take a few happy memories away from something as shitty as a funeral.
As for the rest of the family, well... most of us just grew apart over the years. Naturally and not in a bad way. You grow up, turn into an adult with your own life, family and responsibilities and then you don't hang as much with your aunts and uncles and you just stop knowing each other, if that makes any sense. Most find it easy to talk to little kids (I don't, fucking hate it, but that's a different story), but then that lil nephew of yours is suddenly a grownup and a complete stranger and... well, you know. Sometimes you just don't talk. You don't make the time, there's no bad blood or anything, there's just a whole lotta nothin'. And... I dunno. I'm not a family guy. Never been. I don't keep any close friends, I don't come to weddings, funerals and all that shit if I can at all avoid it, but today was... well, funerals are never nice, but seeing everyone, talking, it felt good. Of course it's easy to get sentimental when somebody dies and I don't know how much of this will stick once I get this whole death thing out of my system, but I genuinely liked seeing them again.
As for the closer relatives, well... my former stepmother is a bit fast on blaming my old man for just about every bad thing that ever happened to us, but there's no point in arguing, I won't change her view on things, she has hers, I have mine, what's done is done. She does have a genuine interest in my life in the UK though, the pets, the shop, Claire... she wanted to see a few pictures and videos and stuff and it's all easy enough to share and it only takes five minutes to put a little something together. I don't think I'll ever fly down there for some happy fun times or anything, but if she has a genuine interest, well, why the hell not, go send that email, show those pictures she asked for, go from there. Better than dead silence or hard feelings.
I poked my stepsister in the boob, which means we're cool. Don't worry, we don't Lannister each other or anything like that. We're German. I come from a family where it's perfectly normal to expose your tits at the dining table for various reasons. It was perfectly normal for my stepmother to expose Claire's tits when they had known each other for about 20 minutes. She (stepmother) went and took her (Claire's) shirt off. True story.
Sigh... too much typing about tits and Claire and... I can't wait to get back home. At the risk of shocking certain family members, let's just say we tend to be rather... ahem... active. Yes, close this website now and come back when the next entry is up, because you probably don't want to know. But since people are stupid on the internet and share everything and because it's totally on my brain right now... yeah, once a day is usually our absolute minimum, twice or three times is more realistic and that's really when work, gaming and other important stuff keeps us too busy for more. I've been here since Thursday morning. Now it's Sunday. I'd be jacking it right the fuck now, till my arm falls off, if I wasn't at my brother's house. Call me prude, but somehow I just don't think it's nice to touch your dick at somebody else's home, then touch their things. And you never know where... you know. Where to? What on? That stuff has a nasty habit of going all over the place when it's been a while and I wouldn't want somebody else's cream of mushroom on my personal belongings, so I just gotta be chaste and sleep like a bicycle. You know, on a little stand. Come to think of it, I'm only allowed to take 100ml of fluid with me to the airport. Hmm...
So many thoughts. So many emotions. And feeling a little feckish. I should go to sleep and fast-forward to a moment a little closer to my flight back home.
-Cat
Freitag, 27. Juni 2014
Sonntag, 22. Juni 2014
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!
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.
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.
Give it another year and we'll be walking around town with a freakishly huge lizard and a monstrous snake. Take that, owl guy!
-Cat
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!" |
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. |
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.
 |
| The eeeeeyes! |
 |
| Owls are more popular than reptiles, but the guy has to die at some point, right? |
Samstag, 21. Juni 2014
Taking Those Pixels Away
I like racing games, shooters, space-sims, the occasional adventure and just about every other kind of game that isn't a super realistic simulation or involves ponies. But if I had to name a favourite genre, I'd probably say RPGs. Especially old-school stuff like Wizardry or the better Might & Magic games where you create a whole party of adventurers from scratch, explore dungeons, slay dragons and all those cheesy things you do in these games. And how can you enjoy a good RPG and not have a soft spot for this:
A dragon's leathery nutsack full of weird dice to be used with Pathfinder, a tabletop-RPG, which works entirely without a computer. Well, almost.
You can get all the official rules and everything you need to know in order to play entirely for free on the interwebs. And by that I'm not referring to some pirated PDF-scans of official rulebooks, but the actual, real game and everything there is to know about it, perfectly legal and for everyone to use. We've bought the starter-set, because it contains those fun little cardboard-cutouts to help with the battles and it's all incredibly high-quality and full of amazing artwork for a reasonable price of 20something Quid.
Pathfinder uses a slightly modified D&D 3.5 ruleset and contains most of the same races, classes, items and gameplay mechanics you may be used to from the Forgotten Realms. It allows for some fun, interesting twists like Gestalt-Multiclassing, steampunky Gunslingers, interesting prestige classes such as the Eldritch Knight and some unusual, exotic races like raven-like Tengu or the Kitsune. You even get a few daily bonuses and abilities depending on what deity your character worships. And if that's not enough for you to create that one character you've always wanted, there's also a pretty detailed and helpful ruleset on how to create playable monster races. I think I might go for an evil, dual-wielding gnoll or something. Maybe something a little more badass than the Hogger some of you must be picturing. :P
Fortunately, the one truly, seriously annoying thing with most tabletop-RPGs, keeping track of every character's stats, abilities, gear and all the maths behind it, is something I can delegate to Hero Lab. This program is absolutely amazing and a massive help with character sheets. Let's say we want to stick with the example of my gnoll up there and I want to create a character sheet for him. Do you know all the racial qualities, traits and other details of gnolls from the top of my head? I don't, but Hero Lab does, so it automatically makes my gnoll a little stronger and tougher, but also a bit dumber and less charismatic than average Joe and gives him the appropriate racial goodies such as darkvision.
And since I said I wanted him to dual-wield I can go check the requirements for the Two-Weapon-Fighting feat right there in the program, make sure I spend enough points on raising my character's dexterity and maybe teach him to use exotic weapons, because dual bastard swords are cool and hit so much harder - if you can hit at all. Hero Lab automatically calculates the attack and damage bonuses for the main hand and offhand weapon and considers all current feats, ability-bonuses and whether or not you're using a small weapon in your offhand. Are you using a weapon you're not proficient with? Did you pick a fighting style, which simply isn't going to work with your character? Hero Lab will make sure to tell you.
It also checks the weight of all your possessions and tells you whether you're over-encumbered, calculates arcane spellcasting failure due to armor and does all that annoying crap, which is oh-so easy to forget when you fill in those character sheets, especially when you're a bit rusty with the rules.
Look. I know I sound like I'm trying to sell this thing to you or like they're paying me anything if you get it (which, sadly, they're not), but I simply cannot stress this enough - it's simply an incredible tool, which removes 90% of the hassle and lets you focus on the actual game. And it creates pretty decent-looking character sheets if you want to print them:
It's in every way as simple and intuitive as creating and leveling a character in a D&D-based computer game.
Speaking of computer games, of course I'm still playing Everquest 2, as well. My character has been stuck on level 83-84 for a while, because frankly, I've been stalling. First of all, you just stop getting new gear at level 79. You can buy instant level 85 characters in the cash shop (wtf? WHY?), whose equipment is more than twice as powerful than all the level 70ish crap I had on my berserker. So I was fully expecting to get my ass handed the moment I went to explore the 85+ zones. Which, fortunately, didn't happen, because the quest line there provides characters with free gear even more powerful than the stuff in the item shop. Good! Money should never buy power in an MMO.
The other reason I didn't level up much was the whole flying mount thing. You can have a burning pegasus. With leathery bat-wings or clad in fiery plate armor. Or one of those cheesy ones with feathery wings, if that's your thing. Or grab any variety of drake, wyvern or dragon, phoenix, giant bird or giant insect you can think of. I couldn't make up my fucking mind! In the end I went with something completely different:
Not only are the flying animations surprisingly good (I love EQ2 and all, but most of the game's animations are wooden, choppy and pretty awful), but those wings really fit the character, perfectly. The leathery skin and texture go well with the lizard-tail and the frills and all the flabby lizard-features and it just makes sense.
The goofy pants might be a bit much, though.
-Cat
 |
| Dun dun dunnnnnn! |
You can get all the official rules and everything you need to know in order to play entirely for free on the interwebs. And by that I'm not referring to some pirated PDF-scans of official rulebooks, but the actual, real game and everything there is to know about it, perfectly legal and for everyone to use. We've bought the starter-set, because it contains those fun little cardboard-cutouts to help with the battles and it's all incredibly high-quality and full of amazing artwork for a reasonable price of 20something Quid.
Pathfinder uses a slightly modified D&D 3.5 ruleset and contains most of the same races, classes, items and gameplay mechanics you may be used to from the Forgotten Realms. It allows for some fun, interesting twists like Gestalt-Multiclassing, steampunky Gunslingers, interesting prestige classes such as the Eldritch Knight and some unusual, exotic races like raven-like Tengu or the Kitsune. You even get a few daily bonuses and abilities depending on what deity your character worships. And if that's not enough for you to create that one character you've always wanted, there's also a pretty detailed and helpful ruleset on how to create playable monster races. I think I might go for an evil, dual-wielding gnoll or something. Maybe something a little more badass than the Hogger some of you must be picturing. :P
 |
| lolhogger |
And since I said I wanted him to dual-wield I can go check the requirements for the Two-Weapon-Fighting feat right there in the program, make sure I spend enough points on raising my character's dexterity and maybe teach him to use exotic weapons, because dual bastard swords are cool and hit so much harder - if you can hit at all. Hero Lab automatically calculates the attack and damage bonuses for the main hand and offhand weapon and considers all current feats, ability-bonuses and whether or not you're using a small weapon in your offhand. Are you using a weapon you're not proficient with? Did you pick a fighting style, which simply isn't going to work with your character? Hero Lab will make sure to tell you.
It also checks the weight of all your possessions and tells you whether you're over-encumbered, calculates arcane spellcasting failure due to armor and does all that annoying crap, which is oh-so easy to forget when you fill in those character sheets, especially when you're a bit rusty with the rules.
Look. I know I sound like I'm trying to sell this thing to you or like they're paying me anything if you get it (which, sadly, they're not), but I simply cannot stress this enough - it's simply an incredible tool, which removes 90% of the hassle and lets you focus on the actual game. And it creates pretty decent-looking character sheets if you want to print them:
 |
| You just don't want to do that with with a pencil. Or MS Excel. |
Speaking of computer games, of course I'm still playing Everquest 2, as well. My character has been stuck on level 83-84 for a while, because frankly, I've been stalling. First of all, you just stop getting new gear at level 79. You can buy instant level 85 characters in the cash shop (wtf? WHY?), whose equipment is more than twice as powerful than all the level 70ish crap I had on my berserker. So I was fully expecting to get my ass handed the moment I went to explore the 85+ zones. Which, fortunately, didn't happen, because the quest line there provides characters with free gear even more powerful than the stuff in the item shop. Good! Money should never buy power in an MMO.
The other reason I didn't level up much was the whole flying mount thing. You can have a burning pegasus. With leathery bat-wings or clad in fiery plate armor. Or one of those cheesy ones with feathery wings, if that's your thing. Or grab any variety of drake, wyvern or dragon, phoenix, giant bird or giant insect you can think of. I couldn't make up my fucking mind! In the end I went with something completely different:
 |
| Red Bull will do that. |
The goofy pants might be a bit much, though.
-Cat
Montag, 16. Juni 2014
Playing EQ2 like a Korean dictator
Another day has gone by, where I have spent several hours on Everquest 2 and not gained a single level. Or killed more than maybe a dozen enemies. Fucking housing system!
I don't usually care for housing in MMOs. Housing was dreadfully boring in Final Fantasy XI and Runes of Magic. It sounds more exciting in Rift, but I've never tried it there. Now it's coming to Elder Scrolls Online and... meh. I had houses in all TES games since Daggerfall, even had the Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim and while that stuff certainly wasn't bad, it was really just a little something to add to the immersion. You know, give your character a place to store his loot, the wife and kids or the severed heads of random people.
Everquest 2 has exactly five million different pieces of furniture, plants, house pets and gadgets you can put in your home. I've counted them all, personally. And there are just as many different kinds of homes you can rent or buy. It starts with shitty little inn rooms and goes all the way to your personal mage's tower or a fucking pirate ship. That's right, you can live on a goddam boat and sail the seas and die of scurvy or something. Yohoho!
Every city in EQ2 offers different housing possibilities. Claire's mother lives in Kelethin, a city in the trees, where people live in hollowed-out acorns. We helped her set up her very first home last night. We even donated a hot tub, since she's playing a frog. And then I watched my fiancee's mother take a bath. Welcome to the internet.
In between crafting rugs, chairs and other things to make a cozy home, she's explored town and located the bank, shops and a restaurant. It was like some weird, virtual vacation. We've also linked her home to ours through portals, so now we can invade each other's privacy or release an army of 200 killer robots in somebody's living room while they're offline.
We've spent all night looking and pointing at things. Found a prestige home named the "Personal Grotto", which has a bit of a Zora's Domain flair to it. Looks amazing, corals, waterfalls and everything, but I wonder how you turn a place like that into a cozy home. Or whether you should even try. Probably doesn't need much more than a bedroll, candles and few books or something. I mean, you can totally set up a bar in there, with butlers, a distillery, mirrored walls and everything. Not entirely sure if it works well with that particular setting, though.
I'm not entirely sure why we're so crazy about what's basically a waste of time and money with no real benefit other than having a place that looks nice. I guess it helps express and define your character's personality. Every player gets prefix and suffix titles, a surname, a biography for others to read - why stop there? Make your toon a real pirate with their own ship, a grumpy old wizard in his own scary tower on a stormy island or a cave-dwelling ogre hermit.
You can even rate people's homes, there are contests and leaderboards and you can check out the community's favourite places. Unfortunately, there are no guild cities or entire player-driven outposts like Star Wars Galaxies had, but it's still the closest to an SWG housing system I've seen in a while. You can even set up your own shop for people to visit, so they can buy their stuff from you directly and avoid paying the broker (read: auction house) fees.
I think I'm gonna go kill some monsters today. Maybe finish an entire dungeon. Spend some gold on a new weapon or something. Not furniture.
-Cat
I don't usually care for housing in MMOs. Housing was dreadfully boring in Final Fantasy XI and Runes of Magic. It sounds more exciting in Rift, but I've never tried it there. Now it's coming to Elder Scrolls Online and... meh. I had houses in all TES games since Daggerfall, even had the Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim and while that stuff certainly wasn't bad, it was really just a little something to add to the immersion. You know, give your character a place to store his loot, the wife and kids or the severed heads of random people.
Everquest 2 has exactly five million different pieces of furniture, plants, house pets and gadgets you can put in your home. I've counted them all, personally. And there are just as many different kinds of homes you can rent or buy. It starts with shitty little inn rooms and goes all the way to your personal mage's tower or a fucking pirate ship. That's right, you can live on a goddam boat and sail the seas and die of scurvy or something. Yohoho!
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| Housing is a little nuts in some places. |
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| She kept her armor on, mind. |
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| It's a frog. Living inside an acorn. With stairs made of giant leaves. |
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| Some windows would have been nice. |
You can even rate people's homes, there are contests and leaderboards and you can check out the community's favourite places. Unfortunately, there are no guild cities or entire player-driven outposts like Star Wars Galaxies had, but it's still the closest to an SWG housing system I've seen in a while. You can even set up your own shop for people to visit, so they can buy their stuff from you directly and avoid paying the broker (read: auction house) fees.
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| "We craft the finest shit in the land." |
-Cat
Donnerstag, 12. Juni 2014
Sins of the Father
Warning: There is no real structure in today's entry. It's probably nothing overly interesting. I just need to get this out of my head. Maybe just ignore it.
One of the strongest memories I have about my father is this huge discussion, where he told me I had to get baptized and spend the next two years going to church on Sundays until the day of my confirmation. You know, tell the whole community that you accept Jesus as your lord and saviour and all that nonsense. I was about 14 back then, didn't believe in god and had never been religious or baptized or anything. But he had just hooked up with my next stepmother tobe and since she was into keeping up appearances and shit, she wouldn't have any non-Christian children in the house and that was that.
I didn't believe in any of this. I didn't want it. Heck, when I asked my father if he believed there was a god, he just dodged around the question, because of course he fucking didn't, that's why I had never been raised a Christian in the first place! So basically, he offered me the same kind of crap he'd always come up with, whenever I didn't want to be part of his stupid ideas: Do as he says or spend the rest of my youth in boarding school. So I picked the lesser of two evils and decided to only sacrifice every fucking Sunday. I told the priest that my parents forced me into this, that I didn't believe in any of it and he commended my courage to talk about it so openly. And did fuck all about it. He knew I didn't believe in god, he knew I didn't want any of this and it was happening against my will and he didn't do anything. Stupid asshole.
Here's another fun memory: I was insanely car-sick as a kid. Ten minutes on the road and I'd throw up. Without fail. And I wasn't done there. Give it another ten minutes and I'd throw up again. And again. I could throw up on an empty stomach, I'd always find some chunks and/or bodily fluids to vomit into a bag. So what did he do? Took me on a vacation to Spain. By car. From Germany. I thought I was gonna fucking die. Heck, he thought I was gonna fucking die, but vacation is more important than the health and safety of your firstborn child, right?
In the four years I've lived in the UK, he has never visited once. Promised it time and time again until I called him out on it, offered to pay for the damn flight myself and all I got was excuses. He'd want to be able to pay for it by himself. He wanted to have at least 500 Euros in his pocket to cover his expenses. Because, you know, sleeping on my sofa and getting three free meals a day is fucking expensive.
We fell out a few months back when he started bragging to me about his new 20 year old girlfriend. I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but basically he made her out to be a total bimbo, but a great shag. You know, the guy who divorced my mother and two stepmothers, forced me into divorce trials in court when I was six years old and turned me into the miserable fucker I am today. The guy who broke apart the shitty excuse for a family we had because of his WoW addiction. Bragged to me about his young, sexy, if somewhat moronical girlfriend.
I didn't wanna hear it. I was shocked and disgusted. And I told him. And that's when he questioned my intelligence, told me he didn't wanna come here because I share my house with vermin (referring to our snake and the lizard) and threatened to cease contact altogether. Because not only was my father a tyrant, a sadist and a self-centered jerk, but he'd blow up at the slightest provocation and then he'd aim to hurt people as best he could. He was great at that. He knew exactly what people's weaknesses were, what they loved, and he'd ridicule that, make fun of it.
It didn't even hurt back then, because I had been used to this kind of abuse for all my life. If anything, I felt sorry for him. I didn't even argue. I just asked him to look at all the things he wrote to me in that toxic email. And why. Asked him if he couldn't understand my reaction one bit. He was my father, for fuck's sake, he was supposed to be somebody to look up to, a role-model. And he bragged to me, his oldest son, about some chick he was banging, who wasn't just young enough, she was fucking younger than his own children. And that's the way he responded?
"Perhaps keeping in touch isn't such a good idea", he said in that email.
"If that's the way you see it", I wrote back. "If you're aware of the consequences and you're sure you're willing to accept them, then yes, perhaps you are right."
There was another stupid thing we argued about. His diabetes. My old man held up a strict diet of caffeine, sugar and nicotine. For as long as I've known him, all he ever drank was Coke. I haven't seen a bottle of water in the house until I was old enough to buy my own.
He switched to Diet Coke and ultimately water a few years back, but to make up for it, he had tons upon tons of instant extra creamy cappucchino. With extra whole milk and with chocolate on top. He could also smoke his way through half a dozen packs of cigarettes per day, which certainly didn't contribute to his diabetes, but it wasn't exactly great for his health. Or mine, for that matter. He smoked when I was in the car with him, smoked during dinner, smoked all the goddamn time. And then I allegedly had "chronic bronchitus" by the age of five. Yeah, you go figure out the rest.
So, let's just say that, to nobody's surprise, he had severe health problems and eventually got diagnosed with diabetes a few years back. My brother would tell me that half of the time our father was so messed up and in so much pain, he couldn't even leave the house. Because he didn't take his medication and didn't give a shit about his condition.
When I asked him about it, my dad told me he had those amazing pills, which basically allowed him to live a normal life, eat and drink whatever he wanted and he was perfectly alright. So yeah, great news to all you diabetics out there - apparently there's a new wonder drug, which practically cures all your problems!
Of course I called him out on this nonsense, told him to be more careful, of course he got angry again, telling me it's none of my business and all kinds of nice things like that.
I got a phonecall from my brother last night. Asked me when I had last heard of our dad. Told him it was months ago and asked whether he was in jail, homeless, dead or any combination of the above. Because frankly, I had been expecting that kind of thing for a while. We all had, but I'll get into that later.
My father died at age 58, in his bed, of natural causes. They didn't get any more specific than that, but it's a relatively safe bet that it was his diabetes. Completely avoidable. He knew about it, he chose to ignore it no matter how many times we asked him to be more careful and now he pegged it.
And the vast majority of things I'll remember about him are bad. His legacy is testament to the kind of man he was: Two years worth of unpaid rent, a rather impressive pile of unpaid speeding tickets, another ten grand he had borrowed from the company he worked for - and that's just the stuff we're currently aware of.
How anyone can borrow 10,000 Euros, drive a company Audi, get a free Blackberry and all the luxury of a good job and never pay any rent, speeding tickets or any other bill is beyond me. But my father has always been excellent at living the big life and piling up debt. When his third marriage began to fall apart, my stepmother told me that he had ruined her and that she felt sorry for my previous stepmother and my mother before her, because he had ruined them as well. Basically, whenever I run into some old acquaintances of my father, the first thing I'm told is that he had somehow ruined their lives.
I'm not making this up. When I was unemployed a few years ago, the lady at the job agency turned out to be one of my father's former colleagues and she literally said that the man had ruined her life. And I also hear that sort of thing from my uncles and I used to get it from my grandparents when they were still alive. I don't know the details, because I never ask and because I don't want to know them. I didn't choose my own father, but I have to live with him and some things I just don't need to hear. But I dread to think about all the crap he must have been involved in.
Whenever shit got REALLY bad - I had to answer the phone and the door and tell people who wanted money that he wasn't there - he'd say stupid things about what he'd do to get the family out of debt. Imagine your own father telling you he'd kill a man if it was paid well enough. When you're ten years old. My dad was a drama queen and he loved to shock people with stupid shit like that, but let's just say it can leave a bit of an impression on a kid.
I had to interrupt writing this for a moment when my brother messaged me just now. It looks more and more like our father wanted this to happen. Apparently he told my brother that "when it happens, at least I can say I have truly lived." Great. Go you, dad! You've been in the band, you got laid, you had a massive house and a whole lot of really amazing cars once. And you're leaving behind an estranged family and two sons, who have no fucking clue what to say in your eulogy. He borrowed ten grand from the company and never paid any bills or rent. He didn't take his medication. He wasn't just careless. He knew exactly what he was doing and he deliberately went there. He gave up on everything, stopped caring and let his condition do the rest for him. He took the coward's way out. What an asshole.
How stupid is it when your own father dies at a relatively young age and the one thing you can take away from this is how he should serve you as a bad example? My brother asked me how I was feeling today and right now I'm just really, seriously angry. My father only lived for himself and now he died for himself. Took all the money he could and just went on a self-descructive joyride. Fuck your landlady, who is sitting on years worth of unpaid rent. Fuck your boss who will never see the money he gave to you. Fuck your family, who get to pick up the pieces. Fuck everyone but yourself. You died exactly the way you have lived. A selfish, immature asshole, who hurts everyone around himself with his greed.
I wish I could tell him.
I'm sure you know those cheesy shows on tv where a character's parent dies and they're all sad and heartbroken, because the last thing they said to the dearly departed was mean, rude or entirely meaningless. I'm feeling like that right now, except I wish I had known what the fuck the old bastard was doing. I wish I had the chance to make him see what he's doing to people by acting like such a stubborn, immature, idiotic, self-centered prick. And that's probably why.
That's probably why he did it. Because everyone felt that way about him. His third wife had left him, the family had completely broken apart and he had to start from scratch. I find it difficult to feel sorry for him. He had a chance for a fresh start. He got a job with a big real estate company. They gave him a car. They gave him a ton of money. They even gave him a fully-furnished apartment. All he had to do was go to work.
Fuck! When I had to make a new start in the UK I had nothing. I had to leave most of my stuff behind, I had no money, all I had was Claire, her family, the roof over our heads and an underpaid job as a freelance writer.
Today I'm a relatively well-known critic, I make enough money and I get so much work that I can cherry-pick all the nice, well-paid stuff and ignore everything else. We're sharing the house with some really amazing animals, Claire and I do what we love for a living and we've built up a nice life together from the ground up. From absolutely nothing.
My old man had money. He had a free car. Free Blackberry. He had the properties he was asked to sell handed to him. All he had to do was go out there and do his job. Fuck, before he had an amazing opportunity like that, I even offered him to come over here with me, make a fresh start together. Tons of real estate places around here constantly looking for skilled people.
And he chose to off himself on a sugar rush. Just couldn't be arsed anymore. Easy mode wasn't easy enough for him anymore, so he just quit. Damn.
Now I'm supposed to give a speech at his funeral. Can't wait. Anyone got any great ideas what to say? Can you swear in church?
The one good thing I can say is that he made me what I am today. No, not fat, pale and balding. A gamer. A writer. A comedian. I'm eating a giant steak, paid by a column about airplane and dinosaur porn. I'm not kidding - if you're anywhere near Germany right now, go and buy the current issue of buffed magazine right the fuck now. Look for my column. Not only do I write about dragons literally fucking cars, but I get to write about how I can look at these things for work, describe them to my audience and then I get money for it. It's fucking surreal - and it's the perfect life for me.
All this shit my father had forced me to do - get baptized and tell the world I accept Jesus against my will, say "mama" to my third stepmother (or go to boarding school), go to bible camp in summer so he could run around the house naked - all this bullshit made me hate, reject and rebel against authority so much, I can't keep a proper job until this very day. This is why I've become a writer. The folks I work for know my style and they let me get away with whatever crazy bullshit I come up with, because they know it's good and they know people read it. I'm my own boss, I get to do whatever the fuck I want and I do it for a living. So yeah, thanks for that one, dad!
And the "comedy" that pays my bills? I'm a fucking cynic. Grow up with a father like mine and you have no choice but to become the biggest cynical bastard. You have no idea how easy it is to write nasty, hateful reviews and columns (the kind everybody likes to read), when you genuinely hate everything. When you're convinced that everything is shit and everyone around you is an asshole and/or a complete idiot. So thank you for that one.
And then there is ambition. You can't succeed in life, be good at what you do and pick yourself up whenever life kicks you in the balls if you're not ambitious. I was in the band. I was in school plays. Held graduation speeches. I wrote a fucking novel when I was 18 years old. He was never there. Not fucking once. The one thing I wanted, more than anything else, was to be noticed. To impress him. Fuck, it would have been enough if he had shown up and at least acknowledged that I was there. Thanks. Thank you for making me try my hardest and for never making me feel good enough, no matter what I did.
Look, I'm 32 years old now and I've long stopped caring about what he thinks. You don't want to impress somebody you have little to no respect for. But somewhere beneath all that selfishness there was a kind man. Sometimes. He was the only one who was there before I left the country. Helped us with the shopping, drove us to the supermarket and let us get a trolly full of stuff when he didn't even have enough for himself. The rest of the family didn't even talk to me before I left and he shared what little he had.
He was a gamer, waaaay before it was cool. We had everything from an old Atari to a Japanese TG16, Japanese Megadrive games, all you could ever dream of. He got me into Ultima, Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Bard's Tale - he played all of this stuff and it was great to feel enthusiastic about these games together. It was the one thing we truly shared. He wrote massive walkthrus and sent them to magazines for a bit of extra cash, which helped him buy even more games. We had some epic adventures together on World of Warcraft. Well, before that game took over his life and destroyed the family, I suppose.
I can't fucking believe he's not there anymore. It seems so unreal. For some fucked up reason I had always hoped he'd come to the UK someday, see that I've turned things around, see that we're happy over here, talked about games, music, the few things we had in common. I never seriously believed he'd make it here, but it was a nice thought. Haven't seen him in over four years and I had last heard his voice ages ago, probably when he called on my 30th birthday or something.
His apology for my fucked-up childhood was that he'd been born and raised that way, himself, and that it never mattered how the kids felt or what the kids wanted. So how did that make him feel when he was a kid? Didn't that make him want to do a better job at being a father?
I'm not sure he ever grew up, himself. That's what it all comes down to. He was a big, stubborn, spoiled child.
He told me he wanted the good old days back when we argued about his stupid new girlfriend. When life was better, easier, he was young and nothing seemed impossible. Ya know, midlife-crisis and all. But to just abandon all responsibility, to not even fucking try anymore, to just absolutely ignore everything for a last couple years of fun until the inevitable would happen... damn.
You have to understand that this guy was the only "constant" thing in my life. He broke up with my biological mother when I was six, then I went back and forth between them for a while until my brother and I ended up with his new wife and her daughter. And eventually that went bad as well and I went to yet another new "family", as wife #3 also had kids of her own. I've been to twelve or so different schools, which looks amazing in my CV, let me tell ya!
So, while he was the reason for all this shit in the first place, he was the only one who was always there. I never had the same friends, teachers, neighbourhood or even fucking siblings for long, but he was always there. He was the only "role-model" I had, even though nowadays he reminds me of all the shit I hate about myself. And while he most certainly was a liar, a scammer, a con-artist, who cheated countless people out of their money, he was always a big child, not capable to deal with any responsibility. He'd spend countless hours gaming, all day and all night, staying up longer than any sane person should. And sure, we'd bond over that, because it's the one thing we both enjoyed.
But damn. "At least I can say I have truly lived." I despise him for that. To have hurt so many people, to have touched so many lives in such a bad way, to leave absolutely nothing behind but bad memories and a massive pile of debt... and to be proud of it. Sure, it was probably just talk. He'd still be alive if he was really happy with himself, right? I mean, you don't just give up on everything when you look back at your life with pride, do you?
You know what the weirdest thing about this is? I don't think I can explain this in words that will make sense to anyone, but let me try - for the first time in my life I am "me". I don't live to meet my father's expectations. I don't do anything, hoping that one day he'd stop feeling sorry for me, because of the life I chose to live, because of what I do. I don't have to prove myself to him, I don't have to wonder anymore what he'd think whenever I achieve something, have my name featured in a cool article or whatever.
But I also feel like my "roots" are gone. Like my life before England had become eradicated, doesn't exist anymore, doesn't even matter. I was never very close with my "family", but now they don't even exist the way I remember them. My grandparents are gone, my father is gone and I haven't heard from my biological mother in nearly two decades. I do get the occasional email from my son, but let's just say that things are a bit complicated. Don't get me wrong - I have a nice, happy life over here in the UK. But Germany is over, it's not coming back and what rare, few nice memories I may have, are exactly that. Just memories.
This blog is a huge mess. But it's all the processing I can allow myself to do right now. I have to help pay for a funeral, I have a flight to book, make sure I won't be stuck with my father's impressive pile of debt AND figure out how to say something nice about him at the funeral. Damn. I specialize in gaming and comedy, not science-fiction or fantasy!
-Cat
One of the strongest memories I have about my father is this huge discussion, where he told me I had to get baptized and spend the next two years going to church on Sundays until the day of my confirmation. You know, tell the whole community that you accept Jesus as your lord and saviour and all that nonsense. I was about 14 back then, didn't believe in god and had never been religious or baptized or anything. But he had just hooked up with my next stepmother tobe and since she was into keeping up appearances and shit, she wouldn't have any non-Christian children in the house and that was that.
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| I came to confirmation day in a Sucker brand shirt and blue sneakers |
Here's another fun memory: I was insanely car-sick as a kid. Ten minutes on the road and I'd throw up. Without fail. And I wasn't done there. Give it another ten minutes and I'd throw up again. And again. I could throw up on an empty stomach, I'd always find some chunks and/or bodily fluids to vomit into a bag. So what did he do? Took me on a vacation to Spain. By car. From Germany. I thought I was gonna fucking die. Heck, he thought I was gonna fucking die, but vacation is more important than the health and safety of your firstborn child, right?
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| Everyone loves a roadtrip! |
We fell out a few months back when he started bragging to me about his new 20 year old girlfriend. I'm paraphrasing a bit here, but basically he made her out to be a total bimbo, but a great shag. You know, the guy who divorced my mother and two stepmothers, forced me into divorce trials in court when I was six years old and turned me into the miserable fucker I am today. The guy who broke apart the shitty excuse for a family we had because of his WoW addiction. Bragged to me about his young, sexy, if somewhat moronical girlfriend.
I didn't wanna hear it. I was shocked and disgusted. And I told him. And that's when he questioned my intelligence, told me he didn't wanna come here because I share my house with vermin (referring to our snake and the lizard) and threatened to cease contact altogether. Because not only was my father a tyrant, a sadist and a self-centered jerk, but he'd blow up at the slightest provocation and then he'd aim to hurt people as best he could. He was great at that. He knew exactly what people's weaknesses were, what they loved, and he'd ridicule that, make fun of it.
It didn't even hurt back then, because I had been used to this kind of abuse for all my life. If anything, I felt sorry for him. I didn't even argue. I just asked him to look at all the things he wrote to me in that toxic email. And why. Asked him if he couldn't understand my reaction one bit. He was my father, for fuck's sake, he was supposed to be somebody to look up to, a role-model. And he bragged to me, his oldest son, about some chick he was banging, who wasn't just young enough, she was fucking younger than his own children. And that's the way he responded?
"Perhaps keeping in touch isn't such a good idea", he said in that email.
"If that's the way you see it", I wrote back. "If you're aware of the consequences and you're sure you're willing to accept them, then yes, perhaps you are right."
There was another stupid thing we argued about. His diabetes. My old man held up a strict diet of caffeine, sugar and nicotine. For as long as I've known him, all he ever drank was Coke. I haven't seen a bottle of water in the house until I was old enough to buy my own.
He switched to Diet Coke and ultimately water a few years back, but to make up for it, he had tons upon tons of instant extra creamy cappucchino. With extra whole milk and with chocolate on top. He could also smoke his way through half a dozen packs of cigarettes per day, which certainly didn't contribute to his diabetes, but it wasn't exactly great for his health. Or mine, for that matter. He smoked when I was in the car with him, smoked during dinner, smoked all the goddamn time. And then I allegedly had "chronic bronchitus" by the age of five. Yeah, you go figure out the rest.
So, let's just say that, to nobody's surprise, he had severe health problems and eventually got diagnosed with diabetes a few years back. My brother would tell me that half of the time our father was so messed up and in so much pain, he couldn't even leave the house. Because he didn't take his medication and didn't give a shit about his condition.
When I asked him about it, my dad told me he had those amazing pills, which basically allowed him to live a normal life, eat and drink whatever he wanted and he was perfectly alright. So yeah, great news to all you diabetics out there - apparently there's a new wonder drug, which practically cures all your problems!
Of course I called him out on this nonsense, told him to be more careful, of course he got angry again, telling me it's none of my business and all kinds of nice things like that.
I got a phonecall from my brother last night. Asked me when I had last heard of our dad. Told him it was months ago and asked whether he was in jail, homeless, dead or any combination of the above. Because frankly, I had been expecting that kind of thing for a while. We all had, but I'll get into that later.
My father died at age 58, in his bed, of natural causes. They didn't get any more specific than that, but it's a relatively safe bet that it was his diabetes. Completely avoidable. He knew about it, he chose to ignore it no matter how many times we asked him to be more careful and now he pegged it.
And the vast majority of things I'll remember about him are bad. His legacy is testament to the kind of man he was: Two years worth of unpaid rent, a rather impressive pile of unpaid speeding tickets, another ten grand he had borrowed from the company he worked for - and that's just the stuff we're currently aware of.
How anyone can borrow 10,000 Euros, drive a company Audi, get a free Blackberry and all the luxury of a good job and never pay any rent, speeding tickets or any other bill is beyond me. But my father has always been excellent at living the big life and piling up debt. When his third marriage began to fall apart, my stepmother told me that he had ruined her and that she felt sorry for my previous stepmother and my mother before her, because he had ruined them as well. Basically, whenever I run into some old acquaintances of my father, the first thing I'm told is that he had somehow ruined their lives.
I'm not making this up. When I was unemployed a few years ago, the lady at the job agency turned out to be one of my father's former colleagues and she literally said that the man had ruined her life. And I also hear that sort of thing from my uncles and I used to get it from my grandparents when they were still alive. I don't know the details, because I never ask and because I don't want to know them. I didn't choose my own father, but I have to live with him and some things I just don't need to hear. But I dread to think about all the crap he must have been involved in.
Whenever shit got REALLY bad - I had to answer the phone and the door and tell people who wanted money that he wasn't there - he'd say stupid things about what he'd do to get the family out of debt. Imagine your own father telling you he'd kill a man if it was paid well enough. When you're ten years old. My dad was a drama queen and he loved to shock people with stupid shit like that, but let's just say it can leave a bit of an impression on a kid.
I had to interrupt writing this for a moment when my brother messaged me just now. It looks more and more like our father wanted this to happen. Apparently he told my brother that "when it happens, at least I can say I have truly lived." Great. Go you, dad! You've been in the band, you got laid, you had a massive house and a whole lot of really amazing cars once. And you're leaving behind an estranged family and two sons, who have no fucking clue what to say in your eulogy. He borrowed ten grand from the company and never paid any bills or rent. He didn't take his medication. He wasn't just careless. He knew exactly what he was doing and he deliberately went there. He gave up on everything, stopped caring and let his condition do the rest for him. He took the coward's way out. What an asshole.
How stupid is it when your own father dies at a relatively young age and the one thing you can take away from this is how he should serve you as a bad example? My brother asked me how I was feeling today and right now I'm just really, seriously angry. My father only lived for himself and now he died for himself. Took all the money he could and just went on a self-descructive joyride. Fuck your landlady, who is sitting on years worth of unpaid rent. Fuck your boss who will never see the money he gave to you. Fuck your family, who get to pick up the pieces. Fuck everyone but yourself. You died exactly the way you have lived. A selfish, immature asshole, who hurts everyone around himself with his greed.
I wish I could tell him.
I'm sure you know those cheesy shows on tv where a character's parent dies and they're all sad and heartbroken, because the last thing they said to the dearly departed was mean, rude or entirely meaningless. I'm feeling like that right now, except I wish I had known what the fuck the old bastard was doing. I wish I had the chance to make him see what he's doing to people by acting like such a stubborn, immature, idiotic, self-centered prick. And that's probably why.
That's probably why he did it. Because everyone felt that way about him. His third wife had left him, the family had completely broken apart and he had to start from scratch. I find it difficult to feel sorry for him. He had a chance for a fresh start. He got a job with a big real estate company. They gave him a car. They gave him a ton of money. They even gave him a fully-furnished apartment. All he had to do was go to work.
Fuck! When I had to make a new start in the UK I had nothing. I had to leave most of my stuff behind, I had no money, all I had was Claire, her family, the roof over our heads and an underpaid job as a freelance writer.
Today I'm a relatively well-known critic, I make enough money and I get so much work that I can cherry-pick all the nice, well-paid stuff and ignore everything else. We're sharing the house with some really amazing animals, Claire and I do what we love for a living and we've built up a nice life together from the ground up. From absolutely nothing.
My old man had money. He had a free car. Free Blackberry. He had the properties he was asked to sell handed to him. All he had to do was go out there and do his job. Fuck, before he had an amazing opportunity like that, I even offered him to come over here with me, make a fresh start together. Tons of real estate places around here constantly looking for skilled people.
And he chose to off himself on a sugar rush. Just couldn't be arsed anymore. Easy mode wasn't easy enough for him anymore, so he just quit. Damn.
Now I'm supposed to give a speech at his funeral. Can't wait. Anyone got any great ideas what to say? Can you swear in church?
The one good thing I can say is that he made me what I am today. No, not fat, pale and balding. A gamer. A writer. A comedian. I'm eating a giant steak, paid by a column about airplane and dinosaur porn. I'm not kidding - if you're anywhere near Germany right now, go and buy the current issue of buffed magazine right the fuck now. Look for my column. Not only do I write about dragons literally fucking cars, but I get to write about how I can look at these things for work, describe them to my audience and then I get money for it. It's fucking surreal - and it's the perfect life for me.
All this shit my father had forced me to do - get baptized and tell the world I accept Jesus against my will, say "mama" to my third stepmother (or go to boarding school), go to bible camp in summer so he could run around the house naked - all this bullshit made me hate, reject and rebel against authority so much, I can't keep a proper job until this very day. This is why I've become a writer. The folks I work for know my style and they let me get away with whatever crazy bullshit I come up with, because they know it's good and they know people read it. I'm my own boss, I get to do whatever the fuck I want and I do it for a living. So yeah, thanks for that one, dad!
And the "comedy" that pays my bills? I'm a fucking cynic. Grow up with a father like mine and you have no choice but to become the biggest cynical bastard. You have no idea how easy it is to write nasty, hateful reviews and columns (the kind everybody likes to read), when you genuinely hate everything. When you're convinced that everything is shit and everyone around you is an asshole and/or a complete idiot. So thank you for that one.
And then there is ambition. You can't succeed in life, be good at what you do and pick yourself up whenever life kicks you in the balls if you're not ambitious. I was in the band. I was in school plays. Held graduation speeches. I wrote a fucking novel when I was 18 years old. He was never there. Not fucking once. The one thing I wanted, more than anything else, was to be noticed. To impress him. Fuck, it would have been enough if he had shown up and at least acknowledged that I was there. Thanks. Thank you for making me try my hardest and for never making me feel good enough, no matter what I did.
Look, I'm 32 years old now and I've long stopped caring about what he thinks. You don't want to impress somebody you have little to no respect for. But somewhere beneath all that selfishness there was a kind man. Sometimes. He was the only one who was there before I left the country. Helped us with the shopping, drove us to the supermarket and let us get a trolly full of stuff when he didn't even have enough for himself. The rest of the family didn't even talk to me before I left and he shared what little he had.
He was a gamer, waaaay before it was cool. We had everything from an old Atari to a Japanese TG16, Japanese Megadrive games, all you could ever dream of. He got me into Ultima, Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Bard's Tale - he played all of this stuff and it was great to feel enthusiastic about these games together. It was the one thing we truly shared. He wrote massive walkthrus and sent them to magazines for a bit of extra cash, which helped him buy even more games. We had some epic adventures together on World of Warcraft. Well, before that game took over his life and destroyed the family, I suppose.
I can't fucking believe he's not there anymore. It seems so unreal. For some fucked up reason I had always hoped he'd come to the UK someday, see that I've turned things around, see that we're happy over here, talked about games, music, the few things we had in common. I never seriously believed he'd make it here, but it was a nice thought. Haven't seen him in over four years and I had last heard his voice ages ago, probably when he called on my 30th birthday or something.
His apology for my fucked-up childhood was that he'd been born and raised that way, himself, and that it never mattered how the kids felt or what the kids wanted. So how did that make him feel when he was a kid? Didn't that make him want to do a better job at being a father?
I'm not sure he ever grew up, himself. That's what it all comes down to. He was a big, stubborn, spoiled child.
He told me he wanted the good old days back when we argued about his stupid new girlfriend. When life was better, easier, he was young and nothing seemed impossible. Ya know, midlife-crisis and all. But to just abandon all responsibility, to not even fucking try anymore, to just absolutely ignore everything for a last couple years of fun until the inevitable would happen... damn.
You have to understand that this guy was the only "constant" thing in my life. He broke up with my biological mother when I was six, then I went back and forth between them for a while until my brother and I ended up with his new wife and her daughter. And eventually that went bad as well and I went to yet another new "family", as wife #3 also had kids of her own. I've been to twelve or so different schools, which looks amazing in my CV, let me tell ya!
So, while he was the reason for all this shit in the first place, he was the only one who was always there. I never had the same friends, teachers, neighbourhood or even fucking siblings for long, but he was always there. He was the only "role-model" I had, even though nowadays he reminds me of all the shit I hate about myself. And while he most certainly was a liar, a scammer, a con-artist, who cheated countless people out of their money, he was always a big child, not capable to deal with any responsibility. He'd spend countless hours gaming, all day and all night, staying up longer than any sane person should. And sure, we'd bond over that, because it's the one thing we both enjoyed.
But damn. "At least I can say I have truly lived." I despise him for that. To have hurt so many people, to have touched so many lives in such a bad way, to leave absolutely nothing behind but bad memories and a massive pile of debt... and to be proud of it. Sure, it was probably just talk. He'd still be alive if he was really happy with himself, right? I mean, you don't just give up on everything when you look back at your life with pride, do you?
You know what the weirdest thing about this is? I don't think I can explain this in words that will make sense to anyone, but let me try - for the first time in my life I am "me". I don't live to meet my father's expectations. I don't do anything, hoping that one day he'd stop feeling sorry for me, because of the life I chose to live, because of what I do. I don't have to prove myself to him, I don't have to wonder anymore what he'd think whenever I achieve something, have my name featured in a cool article or whatever.
But I also feel like my "roots" are gone. Like my life before England had become eradicated, doesn't exist anymore, doesn't even matter. I was never very close with my "family", but now they don't even exist the way I remember them. My grandparents are gone, my father is gone and I haven't heard from my biological mother in nearly two decades. I do get the occasional email from my son, but let's just say that things are a bit complicated. Don't get me wrong - I have a nice, happy life over here in the UK. But Germany is over, it's not coming back and what rare, few nice memories I may have, are exactly that. Just memories.
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| Okay, now we're just getting cheesy. |
-Cat
Dienstag, 10. Juni 2014
The Okay Old Days
Some of my friends are dead-serious about their retro gaming. They're buying all the consoles from ages past, all the original cartridges and controllers and what have you, even though you could just run all that stuff on a PC with much nicer graphics, thanks to modern filters and stuff. And personally, I just prefer an Xbox controller over the old SNES gamepad. And while they're purists, insisting that this old stuff doesn't feel right unless you play it on the original hardware, I actually kinda like emulating all this old stuff. And not just on PC - my PSP is a portable emulator for countless old 8/16 bit games and even some other stuff like Diablo or Final Fantasy VII.
Besides, ROMs don't just bring back the original games. Sometimes, they make an old game even better. Without the ROMhack of Seiken Densetsu 3 I never would have been able to finish the sequel to Secret of Mana, because I'm just not that great at Japanese. And then there is this thing:
I've never been a huge fan of the very first Sonic game. It wasn't a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but I always felt that the ludicrous speed of the main character combined with levels full of traps, pits and the occasional leap of faith were somewhat counter-intuitive. I mean, either I run around trying to get to the end of the level as quickly as I can or I inch forward, trying to dodge all the nasty shit that will kill me if I don't pay attention. These two features didn't seem to match very well, at least as far as the first game is concerned.
So now I've tried the "Classic Heroes" ROMhack for the first Sonic the Hedgehog and I'm enjoying it a lot more than the real thing. Unlike the original, Classic Heroes doesn't only include Sonic, but there's also Tails and Nipples the Enchilada and you can play all three of them and switch between characters whenever you want, which is a pretty neat feature. You can also play some characters from Chaotix, but fuck those guys. Except Espio, because he's a chameleon.
Some of the levels were touched up a bit here and there, as the character have all their moves and abilities from Sonic 2 and 3. The original level design doesn't always work too well with that. The changes are okay for the most part, though the annoying water levels suffer even more annoying slowdowns than before, because they've overdone it a bit with the changes. Still, it's great to to steal all the air bubbles as Knuckles or Tails and watch that narcissistic blue son of a bitch drown. They could release that as its own seperate game and I'd play it for hours.
You can also play all of Sonic 2 that way, you get bonus goodies like elemental shields and what have you and all in all it's one of the cooler ROMhacks I've seen.
Meanwhile on Everquest 2:
I'm about to reach level 85, meaning flying mounts - and picking one I like. Flying elemental discs, dragons, birds, pegasi - there's a ton of stuff to choose from and I find it difficult to make up my mind. I'm also getting closer and closer to the level cap. I'm hoping to team up with Claire and temporarily lower my level via the mentoring system to experience some fun old content with her. And I'll want to level up some other characters. Gonna be interesting to see how long this game can keep me interested as a non-raider once I get to the maximum level.
Anyway, I have a mount to buy, so if you'll excuse me...
-Cat
Besides, ROMs don't just bring back the original games. Sometimes, they make an old game even better. Without the ROMhack of Seiken Densetsu 3 I never would have been able to finish the sequel to Secret of Mana, because I'm just not that great at Japanese. And then there is this thing:
I've never been a huge fan of the very first Sonic game. It wasn't a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, but I always felt that the ludicrous speed of the main character combined with levels full of traps, pits and the occasional leap of faith were somewhat counter-intuitive. I mean, either I run around trying to get to the end of the level as quickly as I can or I inch forward, trying to dodge all the nasty shit that will kill me if I don't pay attention. These two features didn't seem to match very well, at least as far as the first game is concerned.
So now I've tried the "Classic Heroes" ROMhack for the first Sonic the Hedgehog and I'm enjoying it a lot more than the real thing. Unlike the original, Classic Heroes doesn't only include Sonic, but there's also Tails and Nipples the Enchilada and you can play all three of them and switch between characters whenever you want, which is a pretty neat feature. You can also play some characters from Chaotix, but fuck those guys. Except Espio, because he's a chameleon.
Some of the levels were touched up a bit here and there, as the character have all their moves and abilities from Sonic 2 and 3. The original level design doesn't always work too well with that. The changes are okay for the most part, though the annoying water levels suffer even more annoying slowdowns than before, because they've overdone it a bit with the changes. Still, it's great to to steal all the air bubbles as Knuckles or Tails and watch that narcissistic blue son of a bitch drown. They could release that as its own seperate game and I'd play it for hours.
 |
| The franchise probably would have died eons ago if it wasn't for all the creepy fan-made porn. |
Meanwhile on Everquest 2:
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| I'm so badass, just looking at me caused this elf's hair to fall out. |
Anyway, I have a mount to buy, so if you'll excuse me...
-Cat
Sonntag, 8. Juni 2014
EQ2: Playing House
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| "Egads! There's a talking frog in my house", said the talking lizard. |
Claire is playing a huge dragon-like Sarnak and they're not exactly welcome in my city. So she had to crawl through the sewers and then have her own personal version of the Zelda OoT guard minigame - except, if the guards catch you trespassing on EQ2, they'll brutally murder you.
It took a while to sneak her half the city watch, but eventually, we all ended up in my home, where everybody had stuffed turkey and hot chocolate. It's not exactly the season for that kind of stuff, but it's the only food I have up for grabs in my house right now.
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| The buffet is open - ignore the random animals. |
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| All the animals were doomed! Not the frog, though, he's Claire's mother. |
Meanwhile, Claire has rented herself a nice, big estate with a huge balcony, which lets you look all across the beach of Timorous Deep, the little island where the Sarnaks live. She has spent all day crafting carpets and bookshelves and all kinds of stuff to furnish and decorate her place. I've connected our homes with a portal now, so we can easily move from her home to mine and back, across seas and continents, without having to worry about guards or crawling through sewers. Yay!
And then I just realized you can also live on a boat and OMFGIWANTONE!1
-Cat
Mittwoch, 4. Juni 2014
New Games Woo, Old Games Poo... or something
Random thought of the day: When I pass someone on the street, I sometimes think to myself, "Yeah, I could totally take him in a fight." I bet all men do this. Well, until they reach that age where they think, "I bet I could totally tell this guy about my day, because I'm bored, lonely and all my friends are dead." Seriously, it's impossible to go outside in this country without being approached by elderly people, who proceed to tell you about their lives. Complete strangers. And I usually listen, because one day I'll be old and alone and I'll want someone to listen to me, as well. Eh, I'll probably just post another blog instead.
Here's something fun: I had been approached by various publishers, who all asked me to help them out with guides and special magazine issues about TESO when it came close to release. Wildstar? Nobody gave a fuck about Wildstar. Just another WoW-lookalike, it's not gonna last, that sort of thing. Heh.
Does anyone still give a shit about TESO today? Did this game receive ANY new content since launch, which anybody gives a fuck about? And I'm not talking about Craglorn, max-level content so punishingly difficult that only the best five or so percent of players even stand a chance to experience it. Now what do they do? They're announcing housing and a "justice system" like it's the greatest thing since the invention of tits. Owning a fucking house. Murdering and stealing from certain NPCs with the risk of getting caught. Look, those are fun features alright. They've been part of TES since its earliest days, but that's exactly why this shit should have been there since fucking LAUNCH!
There's not even a release date for that stuff. What's worse, it isn't CONTENT. Great, so I can steal from a guy if I want. Or sit in my house. Then what? What else am I supposed to do when I'm done with the story? Anything? They did mention the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild, but again, no details, no release date, no nothing. But ask monthly fees. For "quality content". Meanwhile, Wildstar has regular content updates planned for the next half year or so.
Does that mean Wildstar is gonna be hugely successful, the next big thing, the next MMO to actually keep some of their fan-base after the first month? Don't ask me, I don't even play that shit. But I see lots and lots of users asking for special magazine issues about that game, guides, features, ANYTHING. They're willing to throw money at us for covering Wildstar - meanwhile, everyone is burned out over TESO. Sweet irony.
And while everyone is looking for the next big thing, rushing from one new MMO to the next like the proveribal content-locusts, I'm still playing a ten year old, largely irrelevant game, which you probably shouldn't give a shit about.
I'm having lots of fun on Everquest 2, because it actually has some fucking RPG in it, where more modern titles all just focus on the MMO bit. Characters on there don't just get the possibility to own a house - they have a fucking address. There are so many different big and small inn rooms, homes, estates and entire guild halls to choose from, furniture, house-pets, working mirrors and fireplaces, I don't even fucking like housing and I've set up one of the nicest and coziest homes in all of Qeynos!
The 20something classes are all different and unique. You can be a tanky berserker and fight baddies with AOE attacks and hilariously overpowered comeback abilities when you're about to die. Or tank them as a shadowknight, drain the life force of your enemies and fuck shit up with ancient, evil curses. Or be a paladin, tank shit with holy power, heal yourself and revive your fallen comrades. Or do it the classical way, sword & board style as the guadrian.
That kind of variety exists for all archetypes (fighter, scout, mage, priest). Some priesty types get to run around in full plate and swing a warhammer, other are leathery like shamans and druids and shapeshift into animals and shit. Some scouts assassinate baddies and use stealth and poison, others are more in your face, because they're swashbucklers. And others tame wild beasts to do the killing for them.
Add to that the whole title, biography, voice, surname thing, a large selection of mercenaries to join you on your adventures and even the possibility to worship a deity of your choice and you have a pretty detailed role-playing experience. There's a whole bunch of gods in the game and you can set up a shrine, get some blessings, summonable pets and other goodies from your god if you finish their quests and flesh out your character's background some more. Now try and get a pet by praying in real life. Doesn't work. You have to buy them. Or do it like me and rescue one:
He's grey, he's tiny and yeah, GoT name. But cmon. Kinda fitting. At least I didn't name him exploded head guy or something. He's Nomnom's new tank mate, because there wasn't enough space at the shop and nobody wanted to buy him. ♥
And that's that. Back to work I go!
-Cat
Here's something fun: I had been approached by various publishers, who all asked me to help them out with guides and special magazine issues about TESO when it came close to release. Wildstar? Nobody gave a fuck about Wildstar. Just another WoW-lookalike, it's not gonna last, that sort of thing. Heh.
 |
| Because TESO is faring so much better right now. |
There's not even a release date for that stuff. What's worse, it isn't CONTENT. Great, so I can steal from a guy if I want. Or sit in my house. Then what? What else am I supposed to do when I'm done with the story? Anything? They did mention the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild, but again, no details, no release date, no nothing. But ask monthly fees. For "quality content". Meanwhile, Wildstar has regular content updates planned for the next half year or so.
 |
| I'm probably missing out on a great game, but it looks too stupid to me. |
And while everyone is looking for the next big thing, rushing from one new MMO to the next like the proveribal content-locusts, I'm still playing a ten year old, largely irrelevant game, which you probably shouldn't give a shit about.
 |
| Like most decade-old games, it looks tolerable at best. |
The 20something classes are all different and unique. You can be a tanky berserker and fight baddies with AOE attacks and hilariously overpowered comeback abilities when you're about to die. Or tank them as a shadowknight, drain the life force of your enemies and fuck shit up with ancient, evil curses. Or be a paladin, tank shit with holy power, heal yourself and revive your fallen comrades. Or do it the classical way, sword & board style as the guadrian.
That kind of variety exists for all archetypes (fighter, scout, mage, priest). Some priesty types get to run around in full plate and swing a warhammer, other are leathery like shamans and druids and shapeshift into animals and shit. Some scouts assassinate baddies and use stealth and poison, others are more in your face, because they're swashbucklers. And others tame wild beasts to do the killing for them.
Add to that the whole title, biography, voice, surname thing, a large selection of mercenaries to join you on your adventures and even the possibility to worship a deity of your choice and you have a pretty detailed role-playing experience. There's a whole bunch of gods in the game and you can set up a shrine, get some blessings, summonable pets and other goodies from your god if you finish their quests and flesh out your character's background some more. Now try and get a pet by praying in real life. Doesn't work. You have to buy them. Or do it like me and rescue one:
 |
| Introducing Grey Worm. |
And that's that. Back to work I go!
-Cat
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