Life is a B-movie; it's stupid and it's strange
A directionless story and the dialogue is lame
But in the he-said, she-said sometimes there's some poetry
If you turn your back long enough and let it happen naturally
Oh yeah
Oh hell yeah
...Yes, my cellphone's alarm ringtone is Ani DiFranco. There's a perverse, yet scrumptious irony in a straight man waking up every day/night to a darling of the lesbian set.
It's even more rich when you consider I hate lesbian culture. I've never understood why so many guys like it. To quote the great Stifler, "Good luck breaking through that force field." I suppose there's the whole fantasy of turning them bi and having rollicking three ways, but it's fantasy for a reason. I hate it even more because my name's Gerhard, which, in addition to sounding like it belongs in a porno, has the same first syllable as Gertrude Stein, who herself was staunchly sapphic and full of herself from the one friend I had back in the day when I still got out once in a while told me.
Jake and I used to meet a couple times a week late at night for coffee and cigarettes. He smoked menthols and dated 16 year olds until he turned 26, because at that point, according to him, as much as he enjoyed reliving the Sweet 16 thing over and over again, dating a girl a whole decade younger was too creepy. Anyway, he used to rant on how Stein and Steinese was the worst thing ever to happen to American literature, even moreso than Flannery O'Connor, Anne Rice, and Stephanie Meyer put together, because as awful as -those- writers were, at least they made some sense. Stein, on the other hand, was pretentious word vomit that tried to pass as advant-garde, but was simply bad, especially Tender Buttons and Three Lives, the latter of which was the most mind-numbing repetitive piece of junk ever to deface the printed page in his estimation.
"What's worse is, poets absolutely love her and go on and on about her," he said one night. "I just look at them, shake my head, and tell them if they want to read great poetry from the modernist era to go back to Eliot. Now *there* was a man who knew his stuff. It's just a god damned shamed nobody's stuff has been worth reading since he died."
My remembrances are interrupted by the Facebook chat noise on my laptop. Of course, it's my mother. Sorry, Mom. Not going to deal with you right now. It's showertime.
Then it's off to work, where nothing interesting happens as per usual.
Back home, straight to the computer and bride hunting, the first truly monumental choice I get to make in this damn game.
If I'm ever going to get out from King Svend II the Stupid's thumb, I should marry a girl who can give me or my sons land, and preferably as close to Fyn as feasible. A solution is quickly found.
Score! Two years until I can start to get something of a real RoI on this one, but alliance with a powerful Duke, marrying his eldest daughter, nay ELDEST CHILD! *and* a prestige bump? OH, HELL YEAH!
...Shit. The second war he's in? Even worse. Evidently the King of Poland decided to live to his national stereotype and take on the pagans to the north, and my father-in-law-to-be decided it was a great idea to join in. That's a -66 war right now.
I'm doomed to forever be linked with stupid people and even stupider kings. Sigh. And you wonder why I'm a recluse.
A week or two later, the fait accompli occurs.
Hmm. William the Bas- hey wait! That fatass king of mine made a Duchy title! Give me that, you fathead!
What do you mean you don't like me well enough for me to even demand it?! DAMN IT!
I snarl at the screen and flip Svend off with both fingers, then wait out the results of the Bastard/Norway fight and the expected beatdowns of FIL, whose name I should memorize, I suppose. But who cares? I just want him to live long enough that he marries his daughter off to me, she pops out a kid, and I get a claim on that title, if not outright inherit it.
Oh, Svend has a white beard now. Hopefully that means he dies soon.
Towards the end of November, scrubby count me gets stressed out because I keep hearing a freaking arrow whistling in my direction, but everybody pretends not to know anything about it, and I'm scared I'm going to take an arrow to the knee. *Then* what would I do?
Unfortunately, this results in me becoming a coward a few months later, and I faint at the sight of hog's blood at the next hunt, causing people to laugh at me. Awesome.
Is there any hope to my so-called noble life?
Well, my new wife is kinda hot, and she's 16. Take that, Jakemeister!
...We need to pop out a kid soon, I think. I don't want my UIL inheriting all that. We'll never beat him in a war otherwise.
Speaking of war...
Hooray. Old Man Svend II *finally* stars a war where he'll get something when he wins.
Too bad for him mini-stacks of pagan doom start popping up and mowing down the combined Danish/Swedish armies.
But then that merry figure of fun, the King of Norway-England jumps in and from then it's only a matter of time before that fairly far-off pagan country flies the Danish flag.
Meanwhile, I *still* have nothing and am going nowhere.
Forget it. This game is too much like my life. I'm saving and going to bed.