Merry christmas. Yeah yeah, stop living in the past etc.

The snow outside is slowly fading. I hope it will snow again soon. Instead of this blasted rain. I like rain normally. But snow beats rain. In my head. Outside rain beats snow. It's war out there..

Now freedom.. ain't what it used to be.. ain't what it ought to be. I'm not sure who to kiss, you can't even fuck (just my luck, it's just my luck)

(just because, just because)

So continuing the new tradition of boring top ten lists I give you...

10 ways to hurt your relatives:

1) Step on their toes

2) Push the ladder when they're putting the star on top of the christmas tree

3) Fart in their general direction

4) Pretend you've won the lottery and make a big deal out of how you're going to give everyone huuuge presents. Then laugh and say "just kidding"

5) Tell them you're moving out. Then laugh and say "just kidding"

6) Punch them in the face. Then laugh and say "just kidding"

7) Give them a haircut in their sleep. Do a bad job of it

8) Drink all their alcohol and replace it with water. Then barf on their legs.

9) Play loud music that they don't like. When they ask you to turn it down shout "WHAAAATT?!?!?!" repeatedly

10) Step on their toes again

In case you can't tell.. I'm going for Letterman's job. What does he have that I don't have? Apart from a few billion dollars, a sense of humour and a classy toupe.

And what's up with movie critics? I mean watching Harry Potter and complaining that it wasn't "daring". What is that? First of all I'd like to have "daring" defined. What's a daring movie? And second of all: IT'S HARRY POTTER for crissakes! It's not supposed to be daring or art nouveau or with french subtitles. It's supposed to be entertaining and capture the magic of the books and blabla. If you go to watch Harry Potter and you expect a daring piece of art that reveals new aspect of human behaviour in a timeless sort of way.. then you shouldn't be a movie critic. Unless of course you want to be one of them pretentious arseholes what only likes them intellectic films. And stuff.

Huh? You know?

And I think it's time to get sad and nostalgic again (just because, just because). There's nothing like christmas to remind you how you've messed up life..

I used to worry about that. Messing up my life. I was safely at school with every day planned out for me. Not that I loved school. There were problems, it wasn't joy. But I've never been very independent. At school at least I was told what to do. I used to worry about what would happen after school. In theory it was planned out. School --> Gymnasium --> University --> Job --> Normal life. That's how it was supposed to go. But I used to wonder if I could make it, if I was able to do it. And I guess I wasn't. One year of Gymnasium and then that whole plan was down the drain. I can't function on my own, I can't manage life. I'm this little pathetic worm just trying to ooze along and avoid attention and responsibility.

And things got worse and the system kind of forgot about me. So I was left to rot. And I enjoyed that. And now they're trying to bring me back on track. Something like Job Training at the Barn --> Job --> Normal life. Maybe throw in some education and/or counseling. And I can't help but worry again. If I can even make it with a simple plan like that. Because just that damn job training (I think that's the official title for what I'm doing at the Barn) is killing me. And if I can't even handle that then the rest of the plan is pretty much not going to happen. And I will go back to being an insignificant worm until one day I'll post a suicide note online and die an old virgin living at home with my mother with no offline friends. And I will be on the frontpage. And the online friends I leave behind will be sad but forget me. Just like they'll forget whatshisname that did exactly that. See. I don't even remember his name. We might as well call him Lasse. That's where I'm going to end up anyway. A dime a dozen. A drop in the ocean. Another casualty of society. Blerg. I'm getting myself depressed again... I gotta stop thinking about the future. There'll be plenty of time for that later.

That's what you get for obsessing over memories. I was reading up on Zzap!64. The old Commodore magazine. It was a great magazine. And it reminds me of that time. Every month I'd jump on my bike and race up to the newspaper kiosk and get it. An English magazine. What a concept. And it had a covertape. I was always so excited about that, finding out what was on it. Things were simpler back then. It was nice. Zzap!64 and my old commodore stands as symbols of that to me. Of that time. Now everything's complicated. Just take this bloody computer. You have to have a degree in science just to boot the damn thing. Nah, real games come on cassette tapes. And take 15 minutes to load. Those were the days.

I downloaded some emulator games.

I couldn't get that to work. CREATURES. Clyde Radcliffe Exterminates All The SomethingSomethingIForget. That was one of the best C64 games I ever played. So smooth.

I got Park Patrol to work though.

My mother and brother loved that game. I think I did too. It was addictive. Part of me wants to show it to my mum and see if she remembers it and have a joint nostalgic moment. But I know that if she does remember it then she'll want to play it all the time. And I'll become Emulator Boy working my butt of so she can use "my" computer to play it. And I don't want that.

Chiller. I saw that for download too. That was one of the first games I ever played. On that fateful night when me and my dad drove off into the darkness and bought our used Commodore. Sigh.

Then I moved on to the Amiga. Better graphics. From text adventures to graphic adventures. Fantastic colours. And the demands got bigger. Things got more and more complicated. And I got myself a pc. I loved the sierra adventures on those. Heh. One day in school our English teacher asked a couple of us if we could get him the Larry games for his computer. I thought that was funny. Not so much that a teacher asked his pupils for pirated games. More the fact that it was a porn game. Yeah, back then Larry was porn. So outrageous. typing "Fuck girl" and see the censored box go up and down. That was hot, baby.

Stefan introduced me to Sierra adventures. He was probably my best friend back then. I'm sure he'd be shocked to hear that. His class was split in two and his half was put in my class. In America you don't have that system do you? Every lesson is spent with different people, if I remember correctly. In Denmark you're put in a class and then you spend the next 9-10 years with them. Unless they've changed it since I graduated. It was a big deal back then. Splitting one of the classes up. And a big deal to us too. Suddenly we got 10-15 new "friends" into this little closeknit society.

Stefan had a PC. So cool. One day I somehow wound up at his place. Don't know how that happened, making friends wasn't my strong side.. But he showed me King's Quest. I think it was King's Quest 3. The one with the wizard. You put a spell in his oatmeal and turned him into a cat I think.

King's Quest. Space Quest. Hero's Quest. I spent a couple of hours watching Morten (the cool kid who did everything right and was popular, good looking and interesting yet normal) and Stefan completing Space Quest 4. They were just fascinating games.

I don't know where I'm going with all this. I miss that old class. My pretend friends. All the pretty girls. Not going to parties. Pretending to be the best soccer player. Pretending to be intelligent. Sure there was a lot of pretending. But dreams are better than reality anyway.

We used to tease each other. Morten, Stefan, Christian and I. We each had our own faults that we could pick on. It could get pretty cruel. I remember the last day of school when our class teacher was doing her speech and she said something about how it was all good natured fun. I don't know. Maybe I was the only one who went home and cried about it. Weak worm. Always picking on each other. Always competing. I was good at English. French. Decent at soccer. I was good at pretending to be good at other things.

It just dawned on me that my parents weren't the only ones I tried to impress, get recognition from. It was my classmates too. Trying to be good enough there too. And since I was a social reject I could do it through good grades. I thought.

Yeah. I still don't know where I'm going with this. I guess that was when it all started going wrong. I blame my classmates for everything. It's all their fault. They crushed me. Or something. Hah. Never my own fault. I haven't gone to a single of the reunions. I think they've stopped inviting me. Or maybe they've just all dumped the yearly meeting.

I stopped answering the invitations. They stopped sending them. Fair enough. The last thing I'd want is to stand in front of them and tell them how things have gone for me after graduating back then.

That's it. I better stop now.

np: pumpkins - for martha (980623)