Not to worry, Cranky, ephemerality is in the dictionary. It goes back to Carlyle, so you’re in good company.
Or really, if flowers ARE what your beloved wants, why not go traipsing with him/her through a lovely copse on a nice spring day and gathering garlands of lovely little wildflowers to deck him/her withal? Or something?
CnoteChris wrote:
Of course, your ideal Quickie Mart would also feature a condom dispenser and an ATM machine.
Jonathan Chance wrote:
And thus we have the Straight Dope corrolary to Godwin’s Law:
As a thread winds on, the probability that someone will be compared to Jack Chick or Jack Dean Tyler approaches one.
Arden Ranger wrote:
You can throw in a boquet of onions. They don’t smell as nice as roses, unless you fry them in a little olive oil, but that’s alright, roses don’t either. After years of being bred for beauty, roses now have to be sprayed with artificial scent.
How about a Dust Buster full of flowers?
Personally, I’m alarmed about the present state of romantic gestures. I believe that makes me more romantic than you.
matt_mcl wrote:
A lot of places frown on picking wild flowers, on the grounds that if everyone did it, there would be none left. But nobody ever gets on your case for picking dandelions, and they’ll make just as sweet a diadem as any daisies. Get them now, before FTC finds some way to trick people into paying for them, too.
CNoteChris, this freakin’ cracked me up. Very nice.
So far, I’ve learned:
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Flowers are evil. I may as well bring my girlfriend the severed head of a Guatemalan boy.
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Potatoes are less evil.
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If your girlfriend is insensitive enough to like flowers, they will serve to remind her that she’s only pretty and sexy for about fifteen more minutes, so she’d better give it up right there.
I think it would work better if we all stuck to screwing our SO’s. 
Flowers?
Bah!
Bring me diamonds, Boy!
Creaky wrote:
Way to get me started there. Diamonds sell for a lot more than they’re worth, which you’ll find out if you ever try to hock your wedding ring. They are dug out of the ground by what amounts to slave labor working under bandit regimes (literally, gun-toting bandits that call themselves `rebel forces’ because that used to fool us) that chop people’s arms off to enforce control of their nation’s plunderable resources. Sure, floraculture poisons workers in South America. But diamond mining maims them in Africa. Now how much would you pay?
I see in preview that you also have objections to diamonds, which I’m sure spills over to other mined jewels. I’m sure you also have problems with chocolate because slave labor is used in chocolate production in Africa. Anything else we shouldn’t mention?
To continue the diamond hijack, there’s a good article about what Johnny Angel is talking about in the most recent issue of The Nation. (Unfortunately, this article is not on the website.) There is a bill proposed to keep these diamonds off the market, so maybe you’ll be able to pay inflated prices for diamonds without the guilt of people’s severed limbs on your conscience.
Me, I prefer to just whip orphan children in front of the girlfriend.
I don’t like getting flowers. Especially red roses on any holiday, particularily Valentine’s Day. They’re way too predictable. I got a dozen yellow roses this last Valentine’s Day. They were nice because they were different and unexpected. But, for the most part, flowers are weak and boring and hardly surprising. Show some creativity if you want me to notice you, because glorified weeds don’t do the trick.
Spits out Hershey bar, makes a face like Steve McQueen did when he said “Oh shit.” in The Towering Inferno
Dammit, why’d you have to say that? I love choclate!
This is turning into a really rotten week. And it’s only Monday, too.
Sorry, Michael. There it is.
Arden Ranger wrote:
Gosh, you’re awfully callous for a romantic. Weren’t you people supposed to be sensitive?
Not only has the symbolism of flowers disappeared, the emptyness of the gesture is apparently worth a terrible price that others have to pay. Thank you for illustrating my point.
You may not think much of the idea of potatoes as a romantic gift, but I submit that anything other than the obvious and automatic says more for the giver’s thoughtfulness and sincerity.
Giraffe wrote:
Say, you’re a real go-getter. I myself merely write poems about beating orphan children.
The romantic symbolism of flowers is sometimes less than subtle.
Y’know, folks, it’s actually perfectly possible in many places to obtain nice commercial flowers produced in comparatively eco-friendly places like Canada and the Netherlands. Since that Harper’s article earlier this year (in the Valentine’s Day issue actually, how sweet!) about the appalling ecological and health impacts of the South American flower trade, my local florist has learned to think of me as “the weird woman who always wants to know where they were grown.” I’ve bought nothing but Canadian and Dutch flowers since February, and I really don’t feel deprived at all (never much liked roses anyhoo). Buying a pot of flowering bulbs makes it even easier: just look for that “Produit de Canada” sign on the little plastic stake in the pot. They last longer than cut flowers too. 
Similarly, you can buy “fair trade” chocolate that doesn’t rely on six-year-old slaves working in cacao farms on the Ivory Coast. C’mon people, if you actually put in the comparatively small effort to get the facts about what you’re buying, you can have the stuff you love (though of course you pay a bit more for it) and not have to feel guilty!
(As for the real message of the traditional romantic gift of flowers being “hurry up and fuck me before you turn into an old bag that nobody wants”, this Edmund Waller lyric is even more candid about it than Manda JO’s examples: )
I can’t agree more with the idea of being original and creative when it comes to romantic gestures. However, I think you’re really going to have to give up on the potato idea. No matter how much faux-romantic bullshit you use to dress it up, a potato, as an object, is simply the least romantic thing in the entire world.
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Maybe we could set up a website together…
Keep in mind that my powers of detecting sarcasm are not being as strong as all of yours, but I think I understand what’s going on here. I’m sorry that I tried to share my opinion. I guess my opinion was wrong. Flowers are nice! They’re the best! What I fool I was to think that I wouldn’t be pissing my pants in excitement to recieve a bouquet of flowers! How about I go out and buy y’all a nice bunch of flowers to make up for my stupid ideas? As for me and my SO, I’m sticking to presents which I know specifically he will like, and are going to stick around longer than 2-3 weeks.
[sub]P.S. I apologize if these sentences sound awkward grammarically. I just woke up and I’m so groggy. Sorry.[/sub]
Hey, I’m not the one who went over the top on the ol’ Analogy-O-Meter, now, am I?
You earn the label by your actions, be prepared to wear it.
And Arden Ranger?
If it wasn’t for the whole being-married-to-a-wonderful-woman-who’s-really-good-with-a-knife thing…I’d buy you some flowers. Real pretty ones, too.
Kimstu wrote:
Since I’m still recovering from the shock of the other poster callously dismissing the human cost of commercialized romanticism, I’m afraid you haven’t quite restored my faith in humanity, but it was a decent go. Thank you for chiming in.
Giraffe wrote:
If John Donne were still alive, he’d make you eat those words.
FireUnderpantsBoobs wrote:
I know that last nail is a real bitch to get in, but you can stop already because we get the point.
Jonathan Chance wrote:
I win the Jack Dean Tyler ribbon before BrianBunnyhurt does? I think you’re just biass.
Hence the buying of flowers at the Farmer’s Market or from the horticulture sales at the local college which are actually cheaper than the florist. Personally, the chocolate doesn’t effect me since I don’t buy it anyway [half the household is allergic]. The OP’s stance just rubbed me the wrong way as a condemnation of the people who like giving and recieving flowers.
Oh, and JohnnyAngel? I am well aware of the “human cost of commercialized romanticism”. I am also well aware that the antique jewelry I buy and prefer as gifts from estate sales doesn’t support it and the flowers I buy locally haven’t contributed to it.
But I am also not naive enough to believe that refusing gifts that may have will have any effect at all on stopping the practices of other countries and will hurt the feelings of the person who gave it to me. So if being more concerned about someone in front of me then a stranger a world away makes me callous, so be it.