Valentine musings

[Trek420]

I loved this from an interview with Dan Savage in the Onion:

The A.V. Club: What's your take on Valentine's Day? Corporate exercise, or meaningful reminder of romance?

DS: It is a corporate exercise; it's also a holy day of romantic obligation. It's also a day of torment. Mother's Day is a torment if your mother is dead. Valentine's Day is a torment if you don't got one. And at some point in our lives, we will be tormented by Valentine's Day even if we're relatively lucky in love. It's just like Christmas. Christmas can have a real melancholy aspect, 'cause it packages itself as this idea of perfect family cohesion and love, and you're always going to come up short when you measure your personal life against the idealized personal lives that are constantly thrust in our faces, primarily by TV commercials. I find, though, that if you avoid TV, you don't succumb to the despair. I wouldn't say that holidays are manufactured by corporations, but they're certainly exploited and mined by them. If you're not a big consumer of television, I don't think it's too much of a torment even if you don't have a love interest.

AVC: Do you and Terry celebrate Valentine's Day?

DS: No. [Laughs.] But we're not sentimental weirdoes. We barely acknowledge our anniversary. It took us 11 years to get married. Our anniversary will come and go, and we'll both realize it about a month later and say, "Oh, ****. Yeah, happy anniversary." But we're both guys, and that helps with avoiding Valentine's Day as a holy day of obligation. Valentine's Day is much more of a holy day of obligation for a guy in a relationship with a woman, because a woman has certain emotional expectations. Even if she doesn't value Valentine's Day, or views it as a corporate exercise, she still often wants her boyfriend or husband to go through the motions, just in case she values it. I get letters every year from women who think Valentine's Day is an empty exercise, but are ironically pretty exercised when their boyfriends neglect or forget it. There's this movement to form a day called Steak And A Blowjob Day, which would be the male version of Valentine's Day, where women would come through with a steak and a blowjob in return for the chocolate and flowers that guys come through with, and I support that holiday.

AVC: It would be interesting to see Hallmark try to take advantage of that.

DS: That's one of the great things about it. It's probably one of the reasons it hasn't really taken off in the few years people have been trying to promote it. How do you make a card for Steak And A Blowjob Day?

[Melody]

Thanks everyone. The only thing that sucks is since he isn't local to me I won't be able to go to his funeral. GP was an interesting guy and we'd go get lunch whenever I was able to get out to Phoenix visiting friends. Plus we'd sit there and gripe about a another mutual friend of ours and his ability to get into the worse relationships.

He'll really be missed.

Mel

[crazycanuck]

Hi melody,

I'm sorry to hear about your friend's passing. *Stomp* *stomp* Life is so unfair as someone has already said. I'm sure that your friendship meant alot to him & his family will understand you're absence at the memorial.


c

[ladyfish]

This has been a fun thread to read, since I'm sitting here wishing I could get out of my DH's Valentine gift. We're set to go to a formal (yes, black tie, etc) dinner and dance. He's looking forward to it because he will know a lot of the folks there (work friends). I on the other hand, will know maybe one person, someone I've met, but don't really know. I'd much rather stay home and have a bottle of wine and watch the snow fall.

Oh well. I'll go because he wants to. That's what it's all about--compromise. He does things for me that I know he'd rather not do. We'll have a good time.

As for gifts, we don't much get into that. He's the type that will go out on Valentine's day to the grocery store and buy some flowers because he thinks he should. It's a hokey day all around.

[Technotart]

I have been working non-stop for weeks on my final "thesis" type project for my masters and this morning my hubby made me heart shaped pancakes with sugar free syryp and then gave me a neck and shoulder rub with some aromatic oil while I sat in my computer chair at my desk and worked on my paper...such a sweet guy - I feel so blessed! In addition - he did all the laundry today, took the tyke to the gym to play, did the dishes AND made dinner and cleaned up after! As if cleaning and dinner weren't enough he ices the cake with the heart shaped pancakes and a shoulder massage <swoon!>

When I get this last semester over with, the poor guy is going to get some MUCH deserved attention!!!!

You know though - he does this all the time - not just for valentines day! Valentines day is just an excuse to give each other cards with nice long notes written in them that make each other cry and smile because it feels good to be acknolwedged and appreciated.

[bcipam]

Technotart: You sound very fortunate. I agree loving someone means showing it all year long, not just on the 14th!!! Make sure you give him a big hug from all of us!

[kiwi girl]

I sent my BF flowers one year when we were living in seperate cities. I sent them to his work and I think he was actually pretty chuffed about it. But now we are living together I think doing something on a particular day just because Halmark tells us to is pretty silly.

Besides, if he was buying stuff because he was sucked in by the advertising he'd get me some jewellery I'd never wear - when what I really want is this http://www.teamestrogen.com/products.asp?pID=18198