The Tenth Circle of Hell, or Death to the Petit Bourgeoisie
I know how to tell the measure of a man; how is he to service employees? If he is nice, then you know you've found someone who's at least halfway decent. If, however, he clearly tries to stroke his impotent, peanut-sized dick into orgasm (the French call it le petit mort; in his case it's clearly a very little death) while belittling, talking v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y to, abusing and otherwise being a complete cock to someone whose only recourse is trying to ignore this idiot bubbling arse-gravy out of an inappropriate orifice (or hanging up), then you know that he deserves a circle of his own in Dante's version of hell.
I'm going to invent the cruel and unusual punishment circle for crimes of the modern age, like being a dickhead. So far punishments include: having a loop of dogs barking "Jingle Bells" as an ineradicable earworm, having a luminous neon tattoo saying "I am a COCK" on the forehead which no laser can possibly remove, and being forced to watch every segment of "You Are What You Eat" where Gilliam McKeith examines an obese/sluggish/jaundiced/vitamin-deprived/skinny and anaemic person's faeces to determine what their deal is. I mean, Gillian McKeith! The best part, of course, is that it's not a physical circle beneath the earth; the damned will walk amongst us as a warning.
Oh, just thought of a fourth punishment: being a waitress at a horse-racing event FOREVER. Yes, I mean blokes should dress up in skirts and serve food to twelve guys who compensate for penises that only a scanning electron microscope could ever find, and senses of politeness, intelligence and creativity to match, with massive intakes of alcohol, a Jaguar and a middle-management position with a bullshit job title. These small-cocked men will in turn be forced into the waitress role! Why waitress? Because a) I've been one and it was exhausting and b) it will give these sexist bastards a taste of their own medicine. A cool bloke can carry off a skirt without finiding it remotely humiliating - cf. Freddie Mercury.
(Yeah, I've had a bit of a day. A bit of a life, really. Why can't people be nice? If people were nicer, I wouldn't be so grumpy right now. Ah, when I get this degree! Germany here I come.)
Put the Christmas tree up yesterday - as you can see, it hasn't had much of an effect on my spirit, possibly because it's seven feet tall and consists of a central trunk in which you have to insert approximately 1,000 branches, each of which must be individually fluffed out to look vaguely authentic. (Actually, it's 75, not counting the top section. It feels like a thousand.) Then we put 300 LED lights on the tree - for some reason, half the lights automatically start twinkling in a pattern that would, seriously, fell someone with photosensitive epilepsy and half of them don't. Who on earth is tacky enough to put up twinkling LEDs on their tree? Not us, so we cycle through the 323 "twinkle" settings to find setting 324 - "steady burn". This is how far we've got to date.
Later this week I will have to unpack the Christmas decorations. For some reason, whenever people on TV decorate for Christmas, they only ever have one box - a cardboard fruit box that has XMAS DECORATIONS scrawled on the side. It looks half-empty, and there's always a worm of ageing tinsel poking out of the top. Not so at Casa Wake. We have seventeen boxes of decorations. Twelve of these contain things that go on the tree: a Snoopy bauble exhorting us to have a Merry Christmas in 1979, a thin metal wreath celebrating Baby's First Christmas 1986, two Paddington Bear figurines, a glass Nativity scene... I'm not blameless, though, in adding to the mass.
I spent most of December 2006 in Germany. My mother asked me to "bring back something from the Christmas markets". I hit up Stuttgart, Nuremberg and Wuerzburg, and came home with approximately 80 things that could hang on a tree and 20 things that you can't. This took up half my luggage allowance from Frankfurt-am-Main to Manchester. So we've got stuff like those little birds that clip onto branches, a snow globe of the Nuremberg Christmas Market, and a big heart-shaped bauble that declares just how much we love Wuerzburg (not a lie: best German city!) It's still the best Christmas present I've ever given her. (Particularly the little Ukrainian decoration that's a bauble on the outside, a Russian Doll on the inside.)
Everything has to go on the tree in order. First we put on the generic baubles, then all the novelty baubles, then everything she ever bought in America, then the German decorations, then everything that normal people would never hang on a tree, and then at the back I have to hide everything I made as a child out of some wrapping paper and a film canister, some decorations my mother hand-made because there's nothing better to do in Peoria, Illinois than paint some plaster cast angels with lurid glittery paint, and a decoration I call "The Tumour" because it looks like it belongs in a cancer lab somewhere, not on a Christmas tree. After that we drape beads on it. It looks beautiful.
By this point, we do not. I'm covered in plastic needles, but no, I can't change: I've got to indulge my mother's poinsettia addiction by arranging fake poinsettias, some of which are older than I am, in vases all over the house. We replace the flying ducks on the wall (hang on, maybe we're working class!) with flying angels. We put wreaths everywhere and thread yet more strings of LEDs through them (all so I can put one on my head on 13th December and wander round the house attempting to celebrate St. Lucy's day). We put a Nativity scene up in the window, even though I gave up on the whole Catholic thing shortly after getting confirmed, after I discovered how awesome Voltaire was. Yes, I was a philosophical child. Adolescent. Whatever. We stick things to the windows and put plastic holly and ivy everywhere, and we do it all to the strains of Handel's Messiah.
Only then can I get a bath - which I sorely need, as by now I've usually got a badly-placed rash from catching plastic leaves in my bra. It's not over: as soon as I'm close to dry, it's time to wrap up presents. I am the only person with hand-eye coordination and without ham fists in my family, so I have to wrap up everything that isn't mine. May I say, I'm excellent at it! I wrap presents better than any shop. If you receive a present from me - you'll want it even if I've wrapped you up a showbox full of the turds of a Great Dane, because it is beautiful.
This finishes at 6pm on Christmas Eve so I can laze in front of the fire and watch a Simpson's Christmas episode and eat parsnip crisps (hey, maybe I am a member of the dreaded Petit Bourgeoisie! Kill me now) while wondering if I should have got my father a present that amounts to a £5 ball of string in a tin, or a ball of string in a £5 tin. Well, he'll have to like it, and at least buying that was less embarrassing than buying a Coldplay CD last year.
Then it's Christmas, and... :)
Oooh, I've cheered up now.
I'm going to invent the cruel and unusual punishment circle for crimes of the modern age, like being a dickhead. So far punishments include: having a loop of dogs barking "Jingle Bells" as an ineradicable earworm, having a luminous neon tattoo saying "I am a COCK" on the forehead which no laser can possibly remove, and being forced to watch every segment of "You Are What You Eat" where Gilliam McKeith examines an obese/sluggish/jaundiced/vitamin-deprived/skinny and anaemic person's faeces to determine what their deal is. I mean, Gillian McKeith! The best part, of course, is that it's not a physical circle beneath the earth; the damned will walk amongst us as a warning.
Oh, just thought of a fourth punishment: being a waitress at a horse-racing event FOREVER. Yes, I mean blokes should dress up in skirts and serve food to twelve guys who compensate for penises that only a scanning electron microscope could ever find, and senses of politeness, intelligence and creativity to match, with massive intakes of alcohol, a Jaguar and a middle-management position with a bullshit job title. These small-cocked men will in turn be forced into the waitress role! Why waitress? Because a) I've been one and it was exhausting and b) it will give these sexist bastards a taste of their own medicine. A cool bloke can carry off a skirt without finiding it remotely humiliating - cf. Freddie Mercury.
(Yeah, I've had a bit of a day. A bit of a life, really. Why can't people be nice? If people were nicer, I wouldn't be so grumpy right now. Ah, when I get this degree! Germany here I come.)
Put the Christmas tree up yesterday - as you can see, it hasn't had much of an effect on my spirit, possibly because it's seven feet tall and consists of a central trunk in which you have to insert approximately 1,000 branches, each of which must be individually fluffed out to look vaguely authentic. (Actually, it's 75, not counting the top section. It feels like a thousand.) Then we put 300 LED lights on the tree - for some reason, half the lights automatically start twinkling in a pattern that would, seriously, fell someone with photosensitive epilepsy and half of them don't. Who on earth is tacky enough to put up twinkling LEDs on their tree? Not us, so we cycle through the 323 "twinkle" settings to find setting 324 - "steady burn". This is how far we've got to date.
Later this week I will have to unpack the Christmas decorations. For some reason, whenever people on TV decorate for Christmas, they only ever have one box - a cardboard fruit box that has XMAS DECORATIONS scrawled on the side. It looks half-empty, and there's always a worm of ageing tinsel poking out of the top. Not so at Casa Wake. We have seventeen boxes of decorations. Twelve of these contain things that go on the tree: a Snoopy bauble exhorting us to have a Merry Christmas in 1979, a thin metal wreath celebrating Baby's First Christmas 1986, two Paddington Bear figurines, a glass Nativity scene... I'm not blameless, though, in adding to the mass.
I spent most of December 2006 in Germany. My mother asked me to "bring back something from the Christmas markets". I hit up Stuttgart, Nuremberg and Wuerzburg, and came home with approximately 80 things that could hang on a tree and 20 things that you can't. This took up half my luggage allowance from Frankfurt-am-Main to Manchester. So we've got stuff like those little birds that clip onto branches, a snow globe of the Nuremberg Christmas Market, and a big heart-shaped bauble that declares just how much we love Wuerzburg (not a lie: best German city!) It's still the best Christmas present I've ever given her. (Particularly the little Ukrainian decoration that's a bauble on the outside, a Russian Doll on the inside.)
Everything has to go on the tree in order. First we put on the generic baubles, then all the novelty baubles, then everything she ever bought in America, then the German decorations, then everything that normal people would never hang on a tree, and then at the back I have to hide everything I made as a child out of some wrapping paper and a film canister, some decorations my mother hand-made because there's nothing better to do in Peoria, Illinois than paint some plaster cast angels with lurid glittery paint, and a decoration I call "The Tumour" because it looks like it belongs in a cancer lab somewhere, not on a Christmas tree. After that we drape beads on it. It looks beautiful.
By this point, we do not. I'm covered in plastic needles, but no, I can't change: I've got to indulge my mother's poinsettia addiction by arranging fake poinsettias, some of which are older than I am, in vases all over the house. We replace the flying ducks on the wall (hang on, maybe we're working class!) with flying angels. We put wreaths everywhere and thread yet more strings of LEDs through them (all so I can put one on my head on 13th December and wander round the house attempting to celebrate St. Lucy's day). We put a Nativity scene up in the window, even though I gave up on the whole Catholic thing shortly after getting confirmed, after I discovered how awesome Voltaire was. Yes, I was a philosophical child. Adolescent. Whatever. We stick things to the windows and put plastic holly and ivy everywhere, and we do it all to the strains of Handel's Messiah.
Only then can I get a bath - which I sorely need, as by now I've usually got a badly-placed rash from catching plastic leaves in my bra. It's not over: as soon as I'm close to dry, it's time to wrap up presents. I am the only person with hand-eye coordination and without ham fists in my family, so I have to wrap up everything that isn't mine. May I say, I'm excellent at it! I wrap presents better than any shop. If you receive a present from me - you'll want it even if I've wrapped you up a showbox full of the turds of a Great Dane, because it is beautiful.
This finishes at 6pm on Christmas Eve so I can laze in front of the fire and watch a Simpson's Christmas episode and eat parsnip crisps (hey, maybe I am a member of the dreaded Petit Bourgeoisie! Kill me now) while wondering if I should have got my father a present that amounts to a £5 ball of string in a tin, or a ball of string in a £5 tin. Well, he'll have to like it, and at least buying that was less embarrassing than buying a Coldplay CD last year.
Then it's Christmas, and... :)
Oooh, I've cheered up now.