The ethiquette of giving gifts

I’ve been invited to a birthday party tonight for this girl that I know. This very early morning I got up to have a look and see if I could find anything suitable in the flower shop on my way to work… They had flowers. After standing outside the shop for around five minutes, attracting some rather inquisitive attention from the passerbys and the shop owner who looked worried that I would come in, I decided not to. Fuck it.
Say it with flowers? Then what are you saying, really? I’m not going to give someone pieces of dying vegetation. Unless I’m taking you for a date or putting you in the ground, of course.

It’s kind of grotesque. Plants are living beings too. Let’s say I could find a dog that was put down recently, nice and fresh, and I chop off its leg and put it in a vase along with a beating heart. That would provoke a different reaction, methinks.
I’m not a treehugger or anything. If a tree wants a hug, it should just ask.

Besides, the girl that I’m talking about likes to play hard. She’s been in the army, worked at a construction site, and in many respects I feel the urge to show her my penis just to convince her that I’m a man. And myself. But she’s really good looking, though, feminine and curved, and you wouldn’t know it unless her mouth was like a toilet. I guess it must be all that time she spent with construction workers. Ass-crack kind of guys.

Like the one I spoke to just three minutes ago.
You see, I got in early yesterday and today because they are upgrading the furniture in my office. The last time they did this, back when I lived on the 2nd floor, some of my gizmos were lost or stolen. If they were stolen, great, I hope they came to some use. If they weren’t, then I have no clue as to where they are. And being able to account for the equpment this institite has is one of my tasks. So I want to be here when it happens.

Anyway. It took less than half a minute for one of the guys putting up the office to ask me what it would cost to upgrade his harddrive. You see, he only had a 30 gigabyte harddrive, and he naturally wanted more space. A little bit of lebensraum.
"I play violence," he actually said that, "so I guess the rest of the machine is okay for my use. I only use it for a little gaming, watching movies my friends have burnt and downloading .. music!" His eyes darted a second before the word ‘music’. I couldn’t keep myself from smiling. The internet is for porn. But I digress.

A girl at work just gave me a nice bottle of Masi two days ago for giving her support when she was handing in her master’s. I was only holding her hand through the last editing, so to speak, but girls appreciate that. What can I say? People love me. But it’s the first time I’ve been given a wine that I really like myself, and I’ve been getting a lot of free wine over course of the years.
Masi – red and white – is great for both meals and party accessory, and comes at an afforable price. It’s not top class of course, but in many occasions top class is just a waste of good wine. You need some candle lights, a lil’ pasta with meatballs, soothing music and preferably a member of the opposite sex.
Other times you just want to get blasted. Masi can do both.

But the question at hand is still related to the topic, namely that of the birthday tonight. Is it okay for me to bring her that good bottle of Masi, which was wholeheartedly bought with me in mind by a co-worker as a token of appreciation? I can’t say that I haven’t done it before. Some times it all boils down to what kind of cash I have. But at the moment I’m pretty self-sufficient, and my wine cellar is pretty good too.
My father has a tendency to give stuff away that he’s been given. A towel. A pillowcase. A Shakira CD. He’s just like me in that I would never buy a towel or a pillowcase unless someone had written it down on a list and handed it to me. So it’s quite obvious. A bottle of wine, on the other hand, is pretty generic.

I’m just wondering about the ethiquette here.
What’s the proper thing to do? Is it alright to give away second-hand gifts?

Maybe I’m looking at this from the wrong angle. Like I said, she’s a manly type of girl. Maybe she just want a sixpack of beer and a cd with amateur porn. I heard in the news that the Playstation 3 console is released in Norway today. Sorry, that’s overdoing it. It comes in around 6000 Norwegian crowners, which is more than two months rent for me. I don’t know her that well. She’s more like a peripheral friend, a friend of a friend. Girls often hang around in packs, even when they hate each other. But two of her friends, which are my friends and closer friends, have received quite high-priced merchandice from me.

I believe the gift standard I’ve set will be my undoing. It’s just what that snuff eatin’ sheriff says to Bruce Willis in Last Man Standing: "You know something, amigo? .. I think I just spotted the chink in your armor. When you go down…it’s going to be over a skirt." And then he spits. Flowers, then?