To see last year’s Festivus loot, click here!

Talking Time (TT), the only on-line community worth being part of, has a winter gift exchange every year. Members of the forum sign-up and then we do a secret santa style exchange, though Festivus, as we call it, is full of in-jokes and TT only memes. I’ve been doing Festivus for three years now and it continues to be one of the highlights of the Winter season! This year my Festivus gifts came all the way from England!

A Festivus Story

It was a sunny Winter morning, much like any other, as always I sent my loyal pup, Jake, out to get the mail. It took him longer than usual and when he got back I understood why it was a giant box! Tuckered out Jake collapsed on the parcel before I could even open it!

It was a package! From a stranger in the far off land of the Engles! I quickly tore into the thing!

It seemed to be nothing more than bubblewrap and a torn up magazine. Not what I’d call the best prize but, the ways of foreigners are strange and mysterious. I dug further into the box hoping to find some explanation. I wasn’t to be disappointed for I found a letter from one named ‘Pombar’:

 

You are an enthusiast of reading fantasy, who also wishes to dip their toe into sci-fi, am I to believe? I have within provided a gateway into sci-fi as I know it, by the wizard Peter F Hamilton, as well as a fantasy work, by that vastly underrated young shaper of worlds, Chris Wording, which I cannot recommend highly enough – as a reward, perhaps, for being so adventurous with venturing into a less familiar genre by way of the other book! Both are authored by some jolly good John Bull sorts, what what

By the time I had read this first paragrpah Jack had already finished both the books and fallen asleep:

 

They both look intriguing, though I have to say, the fantasy one is thicker than your family Bible…

You specified ‘non-superhero’ in your preference for graphic novels, which is just as well, unfamiliar as I am with such a topic, or indeed genre! Here instead I have provided brief works encompassing one interpretation of an actual myth, and one one imagining of a mythical actuality. The former’s a bit rude, and more than a little lewd, but you know how those Greeks can be!

 

(I love how Swanzeus’ wang is censored throught the entirety of the  comic)

You claimed a general disinterest in sports games, though you did specify a mild fondness for sports games of the markedly silly variety, and so I have enclosed the closest thing to Blitzball that one can reasonably purchase these days. One of the better RPGs I’ve played of late, delightfully light & breezy, with the touch screen controls actually being warranted! A word of warning to the wise, however; the audio is absolutely irredeemable, with voice acting, despite being all British, that can only be described as ‘ghastly’. Turn the volume off and it’s a positive delight, however.

I have no idea what this game is but from Pombar’s description of it I can’t wait to dig into Inazuma Eleven.

In a charitable act that shall be echored down the ages, I have bestowed upon you a gift of monumental greatness. A packet of those most ursine of German potato-based snacks, POMBAR

 

Now that I know what pombars are I kind of don’t want to eat these. I must keep them in order to show others. Also, really? We get Teddy Grahams, delicious flavored graham crackers shaped like bears  and Europe is stuck with Pombars, another potato chip?

However, to be so sickeningly earnest and genuine as to merely grant gifts and goodwill is far too distasteful and unsightly to any upstanding Gentleman, and so I have included some genuine nastiness to balance out all this positivity. As part of my devious scheme, I discovered that you have a liking of salt… and so I prepared a fiendish ‘gift’, towards which there is no possibility of being grateful! A veritable trinity of sugary despair, in the form of sweets. One from an ancient confectionist, inclined in the peddling of such wares for almost as long as your land has had its self-determination! As for its erstwhile companions, they’re from like gamers or something becoz I heard you like games?

 

Oh, no! Not sweets! What shall I ever do?

*nom, nom, nom*

Happy Festivus Falselogic! -Pombar

Many thanks to Pombar for such wonderful Festivus gifts